Retro-man: Origen Story
My building of systems and methodologies did not start the last couple years with the new tools we have. I have always been the marine who secures the beachhead - then prepared the way to land the Army. The story begins in 1984, on a Prime Mini-computer. Emacs was my editor. I think my fingers still have arthritis from the Emacs finger jujitsu.
My first job in IT was my freshman college summer. A roommate got me a gig with the US Geological Survey. 3 of us were hired. College interns were “free money”. I had only had 1 computer science class and had taught myself basic in high school on an Apple IIe.
I didn’t know Fortran so the other two got the Fortran work. I was given the Info database - on a Prime minicomputer. No training. No how-to books, just an alphabetical listing of the commands. No one else knew the product at our division.
So I would ask questions of the lead Info person in Washington DC. I annoyed her because she wasn’t in the business of training interns out of Illinois.
Then I started asking her questions she couldn’t answer. Then I started sending her the answers.
She tapped me to do a national project - as a college student.
Info didn’t have indexes, you would sort the table. Some tables you wanted sorted more than one way.
Info did have relationships. So I would create a new table with the field to sort on and the field to relate on. Without knowing database theory, I invented an index. Not the first or best implementation, of course. Just applying problem solving without having the specific education.
I ended up speaking at the national Info conference teaching adults my technique. Ride my first airplane going to DC, where I rode my first train and took my first cab ride. I was a hick from a small town traveling on the government’s dime to teach people twice my age techniques I had developed.
I was 19 years old at the beginning of that job. And held that job the next 4 years even as I flunked out of college and talked my way back in. And then left without ever graduating.
The 500mb - that’s Mega-byte hard drive was the size of a washing machine. I wrote bastardized systems with some work done in Lisp (Emac’s scripting language), Fortran and Info. Glad I didn’t have to support that spaghetti code.
Retro-tech is my history - not my hobby :)
