Liza writes:
>
> I wish there were people on the list, with college degrees, who just
> have no doubt that they just  _love_  what they do (like I do), that
> would speak up as examples. Without that, all I can say is I know
> _plenty_  of people, with college degrees, who are just on  _fire_
> for their chosen field - whether it be a fine arts degree, sports,
> allied health, cancer research, math, biology, psychology, dance,
> filmmaking, literature  --  What can I say? :D

David:
OK.

BA in Philosophy, BA in Math/Computer Science, 1983. The latter has
enabled a 16+ year career as a Unix systems programmer. The passion
that
inspired me to work with Unix systems all started in college, when
we got some Dec Vax 11/780's running Unix, and were shown some video-
clips of Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, the pioneers from Bell labs
on this wonderful new (at the time) approach to solving computer
problems.
These guys initiated a revolution in programming, and their lessons
of building smaller tools which do just one thing, but do it well
and can be combined with other software tools to build larger powerful
programs has been somewhat of an unheralded but powerful approach
which
still proves to be true today, even amidst the bloat-ware that
mega-companies like Microsoft put out today.

Some times have been lean (like when I owned part of a small company
that
I worked for), but I have had a good run with being an old Unix
hacker,
and have found a home at least for now with one of the largest ISP's
in the US as a programmer in our Internet servers group. Given the
rise
of the Internet, and the fact that Microsoft has not been able to
produce
reliable performers on the backend has kept the Unix wave from
reaching
the beach for the time being.

I just interviewed a young Georgia Tech student for an intern position
with our group, and was delighted to hear that this computer science
major is being taught assembly language and architecture, a discipline
which has been overshadowed by modern higher level programming
languages,
but is still important and revelant to understanding how computers
really work, and how to find bottlenecks with performance when the
higher level tools fail. Many universities no longer teach such a
discipline, but I can still put to use some of the skills learned
in this subject over 16 years ago in college, and am glad to hear that
Ga Tech realizes the value of such training.

Obtaining a degree certainly does not guarantee success in any given
field, but I can say that almost all of my programmer colleagues at
least have BA/BS degrees in Computer Science, and it is still a
pre-requisite to landing a good situation in the high-tech circles
that
I have been associated with. At the time I was in college, computers
were prohibitively expensive to buy for individual use, and only
large companies or institutions of learning were able to afford to
have bleeding edge systems around. As such, without college, I
probably would have never been exposed to the concepts that have
made a career that I really enjoy. Today, access to powerful
computing has changed considerably, but the cutting edge research
in CS is still being driven by graduate students at universities
- I still visit Emory and Ga Tech libraries to try to keep up
with some of this fascinating stuff.

OB raw-foods: How is the summer produce looking this season ?
We started the spring/summer with a drought here in the SE US,
but the rain has really pounded the farmers lately, ruining
staple crops like corn, etc.

Regards,

David
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