1981
Outlook: What did I know about computers before going to work in the computer industry ..? Next to nothing. Well, that’s not exactly true. I did know a thing or two. I remember that, before graduate school ..I wanted nothing to do with computers. The ‘load-sheets’ and ‘punch-cards’ I saw other students carrying around with them did not appeal to me in the least. Nor could I see myself working in a ‘computer-room’ that resembled the inside of a space-ship ..like where HAL was located in the film ‘2001 Space Odyssey’. Furthermore, textbook and media images I saw of women working in computer industry looked like they came out of a 1950’s issue of Look magazine. However, graduate school changed all of that. Now I had a revised outlook:
1. Computer programs sure beat manual number-crunching.
2. The folks working on speech recognition systems for computers at UCI took an interest in my thesis.
3. I envisioned a day when people would share data on a computer located somewhere else, which meant I wouldn’t necessarily have to work inside a computer room.
4. I took two computer courses taught by the same instructor. He required us to do a systems analysis study of each business operation first, then submit it along with any programs we wrote. The programs had to fit the operation.
5. The instructor told us that this would lead to greater job mobility. You can often go to work for the client company simply because, like an auditor .. you get a real good look at their business operations.
6. He was right, each organization I studied for my programming assignments ..offered me a job (a gas station, a paint-supply store and an survey organization for the health-care industry).
7. It didn’t look like I’d be confined to a computer lab after all, which meant I could get a better look around .. hopefully see women who didn’t look like models from the ’fifties.
1. Computer programs sure beat manual number-crunching.
2. The folks working on speech recognition systems for computers at UCI took an interest in my thesis.
3. I envisioned a day when people would share data on a computer located somewhere else, which meant I wouldn’t necessarily have to work inside a computer room.
4. I took two computer courses taught by the same instructor. He required us to do a systems analysis study of each business operation first, then submit it along with any programs we wrote. The programs had to fit the operation.
5. The instructor told us that this would lead to greater job mobility. You can often go to work for the client company simply because, like an auditor .. you get a real good look at their business operations.
6. He was right, each organization I studied for my programming assignments ..offered me a job (a gas station, a paint-supply store and an survey organization for the health-care industry).
7. It didn’t look like I’d be confined to a computer lab after all, which meant I could get a better look around .. hopefully see women who didn’t look like models from the ’fifties.
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