Hi Peter,

I discovered pretty early in my career that GOOD Boomer programmers
played musical instruments and rode bicycles, and if they had degrees
at all those degrees weren't in MIS/IT/CompSci/etc. I've been certified
as the worst guitar player to ever walk the planet, but I did a lot of
busking during the summer of 1977, earning about a dollar for the
summer. And I was a holy terror on my bicycle --- I was very fast.

It's not surprising that music taught you math --- they're very related.

SteveT

Steve Litt

http://444domains.com


Peter Duffy said on Sun, 08 Sep 2024 00:43:46 +0100

>In a strange way, that seems to parallel my own experience.
>
>I originally intended going into chemistry. But I flunked maths at
>school (scored lowest grade possible at GCE 'O' level, and managed to
>do it 3 times). Consequently, I switched to music (piano), spent 4
>years at music college, and then about 10 years working on the edges of
>the music industry (including 7 years playing piano in restaurants 5
>nights a week). Then for some reason which still escapes me, I bought a
>Sinclair QL and realised that I had an aptitude for computers and
>programming. (I think the crucial factor was the QL's unbelievably
>buggy firmware, and the realisation that I'd either have to figure out
>ways round the bugs, or put the thing in the waste bin.) I went back to
>university, got an M.Sc. in computer studies, and spent the next 37
>years working in IT (10 years looking after IBM mainframes; 10 years
>helping to set up, and then managing, the infrastructure of an ISP; 9
>years managing about 350 linux workstations, to say nothing of their
>users; and 8 years managing mysql databases and servers). 
>
>The abilities to work with computers and to write programs can most
>definitely lie buried for a long time.
>
>(Oh, and whilst learning to program, I also signed up for a few months
>private tuition and took GCE 'O' level maths again. This time I got a
>grade A. The main thing was that I discovered that maths was enjoyable.
>I still wonder what would have happened if I'd had a better maths
>teacher at school.)
>
>On Tue, 2024-08-27 at 14:11 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
>> memoryhole--- via Dng said on Mon, 19 Aug 2024 05:28:09 +0200 (CEST)
>>
>>
>> > And then there probably are some others beside myself who aren't
>> > even
>> > and never were software engineers, code developers, or programmers
>> > of
>> > any stripe whatsoever but who have attentively followed the
>> > conversation with great interest notwithstanding, not only because
>> > it
>> > is extremely informative and enlightening, but also because the
>> > experience and expertise of the discoursers displayed here is a
>> > thing
>> > of awe to behold.
>>
>> Hi memoryhole,
>>
>> Just for fun, I think you should try writing a couple programs. You
>> might fall in love with programming.
>>
>> True story: At 19 or 20 I flunked an assembly language class, at 22 I
>> wrote a Fortran program and couldn't get it to run right. At 25 I had
>> a
>> programmer girlfriend who always got "the call at midnight" on
>> Saturday
>> night that "her program had crashed", and she had to jump out of bed
>> and into her clothes and drive to work just to find out that the
>> idiot
>> computer operator ran the program wrong, so I vowed NEVER to become a
>> programmer.
>>
>> At 32 I took a microprocessor course because I operated Steve's
>> Stereo
>> Repair and microprocessors were starting to be used in tapedecks.
>> While
>> the rest of the class was struggling to add two numbers with their
>> class-mandated Heathkit ET6800 Microprocessor Trainer, I used mine to
>> play music out of one of the LED segments into an amplifier. It was
>> soooo cool to give instructions to a generic machine and have it do
>> what you wanted.
>>
>> The point is, for more than a decade I had no idea I'd like
>> programming, and once I really got onto it, I loved it. You never
>> know:
>> This might happen to you.
>>
>>
>> SteveT
>>
>> Steve Litt
>>
>> http://444domains.com
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