Wait, What

[afuna]

Spent the afternoon in the car with my mom running various errands and we got to talking. It turns out that mom was a systems programmer way back in the day of mainframes, and knows COBOL and assembly. And dad taught himself C in order to build a rudimentary inventory system (on a microcomputer? is that the thing?) -- this was for their first company, so late 80s/very early 90s.

I am floored. I was vaguely aware that she'd had a job involving computers and banks, but I did not realize the extent. Why did they not tell me this earlier? D:

(Note: Dad never taught me C; mom never taught me assembly. I wonder what would have happened if they had, though? I suspect murder and mayhem!)

Anyway, I found myself promising to teach her how to master excel -- or at least work it enough to run totals for her job. I suspect murder and mayhem! Whoo!

Comments

[vlion]

Oh wow! that's really cool!

and yeah, minicomputers were the vaxs/pdps in the 70s..

[oona]

Good luck with the Excel. :-p

[exor674]

My mom programmed in assembly, and I know my dad ended up doing *some* computer stuff in college... and yet they have to ask me how to read error messages >_<

[afuna]

Mine are the same way *G* Well my mom is, anyway. But, I mean, I can see why -- I'd need to ask them about old computer stuff too. They're almost not at alll alike if you're only dealing with the surface.

[raingirl]

My brother just bought my 85 year old mother a computer for Christmas - even though she keeps saying she doesn't want one and likes to do her e-mail at the library so she has a reason to get out of the house. Do children ever listen? Guess not. I think it will be my job to help her figure the thing out as my brother's too busy and my sister-in-law goes too fast for her. Let me know if you have any tips after you do the excel thing.

[afuna]

I shall! Not sure I'll be able to succeed - I've tried to teach my mom computer stuff before. The biggest thing, and this may be me reinforcing a bad habit, is that I "play along" and don't correct her terminology unless absolutely necessary for clarity. Trying to be too accurate in the details when she's not yet familiar with computers in general is a recipe for frustration on both sides :-(

[cesy]

I had a similar reaction when I discovered my mum knew COBOL and my dad did Fortran and assembly. It's so cool! Why did they never tell me before now?

[afuna]

I knooooow. And now I kind of want to pick their brain, and I'm teasing my mom whenever I see a job opportunity for COBOL!

(But she says she likes assembly better XP)

[pauamma]

Dad never taught me C

If his reference material are on a par with what you linked me to, I can kinda understand his reluctance. :-)

Also, C is nice, IMO. Assembly... well, some assembly languages are nice, some aren't. It depends on both the CPU design and the assembly syntax conventions. (and to some extent, how suited they are to your problem domain. Doing multiplication or division on a 8080 or Z80 is excruciatingly painful.)

[afuna]

*hands on hips, and sticks her tongue out at you* Hey, at least I didn't write that...!

C... I don't really remember it that well. I thnik I may have preferred C++, except for the whole dynamic lookup/multiple inheritance thing, which I haven't dug into in enough detail to see how it actually works.

I have (sadly?) not tried assembly! I've tried an assembly-ish language, for an ant behavior simulation, but nothing actually low-level enough to actually be poking at the CPU directly. *eyes thoughtfully*

[pauamma]

Assembly can be fun, if you don't need to fight the CPU and the syntax to do what you need. :-) (Tempting, me? Nah. What gave you that idea?)

[afuna]

*chin in hands*

So, how often do you manage to get to a point where you're not fighting the CPU or the syntax to do what you need? :-)

(*eyes you warily*)

[pauamma]

In assembly? Hmm, I haven't done any assembly programming in over 10 years, but I think I got to that point on an Intel 8051-based project.

[afuna]

Hummm. *notes for reference* Not that I know how/where to get started on a project, but ...

[pauamma]

Embedded programming is fun. :-) (Disclaimer: I would probably need to relearn a lot before I get back to that point.)

[afuna]

Mmm, and I would need to start from scratch. I guess we'll get there somehow :-)

[pauamma]

Indeed.

[pauamma]

Also, "systems programmer" in IBM parlance (at least as applied to their mainframe architectures) is actually closer to what's generally meant by sysadmin today than to programming strictly speaking (although sysadminning generally entails some of that too). It so happens that configuring a large part of IBM system and network stuff was done using assembly syntax and assembly macros to generate the actual binary configuration data. (Which isn't to say your mom wasn't both a sysadmin and an application developer either at the same time or at different times.)

[afuna]

*nods* She didn't give me much details, just something about tables and flow and macros. I'm not really up with the terminology involving mainframes though, so I'm not sure what role she played, exactly.

[pauamma]

*nod*

[mrklo-olstphn.livejournal.com]

That is one cool tidbit about your parents!

Happy holidays again! hehe