This week I have been at a software engineering conference and it was quite the experience! I fit in there about as well as an enraged bull at an egg factory.
Ratio of women to men – 1:10
Ratio of gender challenged – 1:4
Number of balding men – 1:3
Number of people with white hair – 1:10
Number of college graduates – 1:1
Number of masters – 1:6
Number of doctorates – 1:10
Number of people older than me – 0
Number wearing tennis shoes – me
Number wearing jeans – me
Number wearing tee-shirts – me
Number with hair touching their ears – me
Yeah, very interesting. Only four in the room were even alive when I wrote my first program in 1972. Only six had been born by the time I had created the first relational data base manager (in 1976). Only eight were even alive when the DeJong PC was invented (predecessor to the IBM PC). They were almost all younger than the personal computer…..
Yeah, a really young crowd! And everyone of them was a cookie cutter copy of the other! Short cropped hair, no part; single style of shirt and pant tailoring, however with color variations; shoes all the same, as were belts.
But the similarities between them went beyond just appearance, it went also to their way of thinking and doing business – they all rely upon others to help them do their jobs. Not a one of them seemed capable of research or thinking “outside of the box”!
OMG! Our technological capabilities do not seem to be able to continue with this next generation! Whereas I can talk to the importance of doing a well thought out functional design for a system; the concept of system is not even their vocabulary! They think in terms of program, not programs, nor even the interaction between programs. Abstract thought is an endangered activity!
Hmmm, this is really grim guys…..
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