>
> >where we were supposed to pick out three careers and research them and
> >write a paper. I chose Journalist, Special Ed Teacher, and Astronaut. I
> >caught a lot of hell from the teacher for choosing Astronaut (he said they
> >were supposed to be *realistic* choices and that wasn't realistic for me)
>
> Urm...personally, I would tend to say that astronaut is not a realistic
> career choice for *anyone*. Perhaps your teacher was not referring to this
> as being a poor choice because you're female...and simply saying that this
> is even less obtainable than becoming an actor or Senator. Yes, some small
> number of people do become astronauts, and perhaps your teacher should have
> had you research what's involved and tell you to study hard in your science
> classes. OTOH I'm always hesitant to attribute things to sexism when there
> is an equally likely explanation that doesn't involve it.
I did some work for NASA. (Delivered a product under contract, not
as employee.) I was in the Space Station simulator in 1984 or 1985, and
was supposed to be in the Space Shuttle simulator talking to astronauts in
orbit, before I woke up with a bad case of hay fever from the mold
saturated Houston air... (Dond ever wandt do go back do Houstond)
I always wanted to be an astronaut... till then. Being an astronaut
is about checklists, and checklists of checklists... Excruciating
checklists of checklists... And you really don't want the high adventure,
cause you only get it when the checklists are wrong, and you are very,
VERY near to losing it all!
Being an astronaut use to be about prestige. Now... so what. Good
old Gulf Oil isn't sponsoring the TV broadcasts any more. Thankyou, Gulf
Oil, you made it memorable. I use to prefer your brand of gasoline
because of that.
As Jimmy Stewart was told in "The Flight of the Phoenix", the guys
with the numbers are taking over.
> >But more importantly, nobody ever spoke of computers as *interesting* when
> >I was in school -- not even in college. They were tools, and only the kids
>
> Computers were not that interesting in the 70's or even in the early
> 80's. I never even knew anyone who owned a computer until 1983. About the
Oh, but you are wrong... In the early 70's it was an adventure. We
didn't have "Methodologies", only the glimmer of Strubel's "Good
Citizenship". You could do things in whatever way you thought reasonable.
Then someone said "goto" is bad. Before long, it was "ego-less programming"
and "structured programming". And slowly, they discarded the old tools
like PL/1, which had operator overlaying and a lot of other things we now
call, what is it they call structured programming today, "object oriented
programming"? As before, it does not always work. Oh, but today we call
the exceptions "data flow architectures". And today, a simple program
that took a few K, now takes a few Meg.
> most fun I had with computers prior to 1984 when the Mac came out was
> sitting in the computer lab playing "Adventure" at a text only dumb
> terminal. At that time, punch cards were still in common usage.
Ah yes...
> My parents have sometimes complained to me asking why I didn't major in
> CS. (I was a psychology major...a pretty worthless career path if you want
> to make any money.) But when I was an undergraduate there was *nothing
> compelling* about computers. Looking at amber text on a black screen isn't
> terribly exciting. If I had been born 4-6 years later, perhaps I would have
> been a CS major.
I started with an IBM 2741 Selectric typewriter terminal.
Ratttatttattattattt at 14.5 characters per second. CRT's came later. The
compelling stuff was when you closed your eyes, and saw a structure in
your mind, a structure you were trying to build. I learned to see that
structure in the mind first, before trying anything. And to write the
comments first so as to define the structure better, then fill in the code
that carried them out.
As to Girls in Computers... Sigh...
-J- ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --------------------------www.mall-net.com/javilk
One slightly used ex-husband, good condition, likes thinking, walking ---
Sitting forlornly in Hecate's Used Husband Lot, The Moonlight Zone. -----
E-mail me for info on how to preview this Fine Classical Merchandise. ---
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