When I started out, business casual was the norm, just as it is today. A big difference was that many of us had "pocket protectors" where we carried our pens, pencils and slide rule. You may have seen those in some movies as a distinguishing feature for nerds.
I wouldn't mind sharing, but I don't want to take the chance that someone in my company could be reading this. I started in 1963 at $1.55 an hour, which was actually pretty good back then. It's mostly been increasing, except for several years when I was self-employed. Now it's more based on my domain knowledge in healthcare fraud detection than on my seniority and skills as a programmer.
I should also mention that I recently bought a Flexispot stand up desk converter. So now I can stand up and work when I want to. It only accommodates two of my monitors, but that's all I really need anyway.
That's a lot of questions, but let me take a couple. I got my Master's degrees in the early 1970's, when we used something called a "slide rule". In 1990 I went back to school to update my skills and expand my knowledge into artificial intelligence, which I had become enamored with. Unfortunately, I didn't finish my PhD (big mistake!) because in 1995 I jumped on an opportunity to join a company that had this amazing software that enabled very advanced analytics on big data (except it wasn't called "big data" back then). The software was called HOPS (for Heuristic Optimized Processing System) and I still use it today to develop custom machine learning applications among other things. I went back to school again in 2016 to fill in some gaps so would qualify as a real "data scientist" - the latest craze. I will say that HOPS was and is the biggest idea in software that hasn't worked out - at least not commercially. It's a system that is great for data scientists working on big data and enables them to do their own programming with minimal effort. I'm still hoping HOPS will take it's deserved place in the world of software development. It will be a great loss if it doesn't! It's one reason I'm holding on - to prove the exceptional things that it enables and prevent it from being tossed into the trash bin of history.
Is HOPS something that could be discussed publicly on HN? are there sources and examples that people could look at? If so, we could arrange some sort of thread about it.
The one thing that comes to mind is to avoid the "hammer looking for a nail" syndrome. I see this all the time, especially in academia. Rather than worry about learning all the latest stuff, concentrate on solving the problem at hand in the simplest and most effective manner. If that requires you to learn new things, then that's a great time to expand your repertoire - working on a specific problem. Of course you have to strike a balance, but mainly concentrate on solving problems rather than being up-to-date on all the latest stuff and trying to find the proverbial nail for your new hammer.
I think someday we will be able to duplicate the basic brain of an infant in a computer. Don't forget all the information is in our DNA and there's not that much innate knowledge - most of the infant's brain relates to the amazing capacity to learn. Someone will then take one home and train it like a human baby. It will become so close to a human that it will spark debates about whether it has self-awareness and whether it should have human rights. I regret I won't be around to see it, but who knows - maybe I'll be back :-)
I'm not so sure about that (but I'm pretty green on bioinformatics). I mean, for one: https://xkcd.com/1605/. For two, if that was the case we wouldn't need projects like folding@home and such to tell us what the structures described by DNA actually look like. And for three, there is a massive amount of influence on brain development from elsewhere (both from within the fetal body and from the womb). It's a bit like having a compiler's source code but nothing to bootstrap it with...
One reason I posted this is because I may attempt to gain recognition in the Guinness World Records. I know my career is longer than the person they now have listed as the "Longest career as a computer software developer" - Kaneyuki Yamaguchi in Japan
Ooh - definitely should go through with that. Also, I'm doing a pilot show interviewing some Tech moguls local to Atlanta. There's a diverse group I'm interviewing from wealthy entrepreneurs to notable employees of bell labs, to people who hold an insane amount of patents. I think you could definitely fit in there somewhere.
For most of the past 25 years I have been working from home - which is a problem because you never leave your work. The main thing that has changed over recent years is that I now take a 1-hour nap around 2 or 3 PM every day, except when I have conference calls that prevent it. After the nap, I feel rejuvenated and productive. I'm sure this is partly related to old age, but I'm also dyslexic and I think my brain needs a rest from struggling with written communications.
(I'm a moderator here. Welcome to HN!) Because you're likely to get a flood of comments and questions overnight, I've switched an alpha feature on for your account that will highlight new comments that have appeared since you last viewed the page. They'll show up with a colored bar to the left of the comment. The feature doesn't work perfectly yet, but hopefully it'll help you keep track of what's been posted since you last looked. Note that the colored bars will disappear each time you refresh the page.
Good luck and thanks for a great post!
(Anyone else who'd like this alpha feature turned on for their account is welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll be happy to.)
I haven't been able to find the colored bar, maybe because of refreshes, but let me suggest you use something that is searchable. That way you could use CTRL-F and then jump from one to the next. Right now, I'm searching for " min" (note the space) to find the most recent posts, and "1 hour", "2 hour" etc. to find older ones.
Have you considered implementing accessibility for this feature before it goes live for all? Screen reader users cannot see colored bars, and need a different indication of the fact a comment is new. I can give suggestions if needed.
Is there a feature request subsite for HN? I’ve seen this implemented really well on other sites[1] in ways that don’t detract from the main site focus or functionality.
No affiliation, I just use a site which uses this to provide functionality suggestions. I don’t see why this kind of functionality can’t be bootstrapped from existing HN code.
As a rather young person in the field, I'd love to hear your thoughts on any question you feel the motivation to answer. Your learned wisdom is appreciated by all of us young bucks!
