An all-too-Graceless evening

One of my "mentors" on the UWEC Forensics team and I ran into each other a few times in the two decades or since I lagged behind him on the Commencement stage in the arena, and we recently re-connected on Facebook. We're alike in that we both landed in technology despite majoring in something completely different. We likewise have a special appreciation for people who are fluent in both computer and human languages, which is probably why he linked this vintage David Letterman interview with Adm. Dr. Grace Hopper. The nine minutes and change capture the essence of a lady who was not merely brilliant, but a force of nature--and thus worth your time for that experience alone.

But what's not quoted in either the interview nor the Wikipedia biography is something that's stuck with me ever since I read it in a recap of her life. Namely that inventing a compiler and an English-like computer language (COBOL) were merely a means to the end of letting mathematicians get on with the work they are actually trained (and prefer) to do. Which is certainly not twiddling bits on and off. In the proverbial nutshell, computers should get the heck out of your brain's way while it's trying to solve the actual problem at hand.

That's hardly a new thought, and is by no means original to me. Yet as I delete and re-import a CD w/in iTunes (to force it to recognize the cover art for more than the last two tracks) while re-writing a whitepaper to stop it from obsessing over a feature that our product just happens [wink, wink] to have (as opposed to its actual benefit to the potential client), the ethos of keeping the computer out from underfoot is conspicuous by its absence. So I'm grateful to the afore-mentioned mentor for once again reminding me of what's really important in our industry.