Posts by Admiral Grace Hopper 1067 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Oct 2008
I once went on a visit to a customer office to diagnose a problem in the wild. To fill the time I provided onsite support and training for the poor suckers lucky punters using our desktop software. It was the first time saw someone lift and invert their keyboard after being asked. "What is your password?".
Reaching the end of an error reporting trap that printed a message for each foreseeable error I put in a message for anything unforeseen, which was of course, to my mind, an empty set. The code went live and I thought nothing more of it for a decade or so, until a colleague that I hadn't worked with for may years sidled up to my desk with a handful of piano-lined listing paper containing this message. "Did you write this? We thought you'd like to know that it happened last night".
Failed disc sector. Never forget the hardware.
The systems written in COBOL that are still running are still running because they're still running. They were rigorously designed and implemented and are still doing the job for which they were designed. If there are too few people who know COBOL these days then it's a simple matter of training people to use a clear, consistent and robust language.
I see zero utility for it in healthy people.
Quite so. For those with normal pulmonary and cardiac function it is irrelevant. For those with such conditions it is on great interest and very useful to have an always-on device on your wrist to monitor things to supplement the pulse oximeter you are likely to have at home. It's a feature I looked for when buying a FitBit as it had become relevant since I last bought a wearable monitoring device.
Icon: everything is monitored for your benefit.
At a recent job interview I talked about "sitting down with the books" when talking about something with which I was passingly familiar but keen to learn about. It only doing the post-interview mental review as I drove home afterwards that I started to wonder when I last sat down with an physical book in my hands, probably from O'Reilly.
With you all the way, right until I bought my last car which rather than being run for 150,000 miles like most of the ones that I've had has been sold at 90,000 as all the fancy stuff that allows it produce 140bhp/litre fails and needs to replaced piecemeal and expensively. The new car is a Toyota.
On a job very early in my career I was driving a van, delivering meat products and picking up stuff for the factory. Having driving from the factory in the West Midlands to a warehouse in Bolton, I checked in with the boss on the warehouse's landline (mobile phones only being found in the boss' Jag in those days, rather than a Transit van).
"I've made the drop, I'm on my way back now".
"Can you do a pick up on the way back?".
"Sure, where is it?"
"Poole".
"The one in Dorset?"
"Yes".
"I'll need a stopover. Do you want me to wave as I drive past?"
"Eh? What do you mean?"
"Get the map out, Dave".
"Oh".
I assume you mean that it will underpin more of the world of finance, banking, transport and government than you image for many decades to come and provide employment for many grey-haired code-slingers in the West and fresh-faced young programmers in India for as long as it does so.
Many years ago, when SQL Server 6 was US and Canada only and we were definitely not supposed to be developing on that version in the UK, we found an issue with the database that we were creating. We called Microsoft and after going through several layers of tech support they decided that it was beyond their ability to fix over the phone (this was many years ago, after all) so they would despatch a human being to investigate.
The next day a giant of a bearded man with poor personal hygiene arrived from Seattle to stare at our database and our code. After three days of staring, occasionally typing and even less occasionally grunting or asking for coffee, he said, "Got it, I'll send a fix". He flew back to Seattle and a fix was emailed to us a day later. Our stinking, silent, staring guru had fixed things and all was well. We went live before the UK & Europe embargo expired.
While working for a Large Government Department in the 1980s when the IRA used explosive methods of making their political point, there was much excitement when a large, unexpected parcel arrived. Procedures were followed - alarms, evacuation, bomb disposal squad, the full works. After being safely destroyed the parcel was found to contain a consignment of leaflets on how to deal with suspicious packages.
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