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Knuth mentions that his secretary used TeX when he developed it [1]. In the preface to the "Waite Group's Unix System V Primer", it says it is written for "a se

Knuth mentions that his secretary used TeX when he developed it [1]. In the preface to the "Waite Group's Unix System V Primer", it says it is written for "a secretary or a manager in an office, or student in a computer science class, or a computer hobbyist". And the "ENIAC girls" were the first (low-level, machine code) programmers, and their work was basically considered secreterial. I guess, back in the day when secretaries were called secretaries, their work might also have been more "advanced" (i.e. more similar to the work of the scientists they supported). Nowadays there is no formal barrier to women holding the same job titles as men, so women interested in programming do not become administrative assistants. [1] https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb17-4/tb53knun.pdf https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb17-4/tb53knun.pdf

coliveira 11y ago
The result of the removal of personal assistants is that today's workers need to spend a large chunk of their time doing secretarial work. For example, maintaining a public schedule, arranging travels, filling simple reports, typing simple code, sorting and answering standard email, could all be done by a personal assistant. This would increase the productivity of programmers and other knowledge workers. Instead, our society has evolved to make these chores a inevitable part of everybody's lives -- and as a result make money selling software that promises to help with these shores.
- lkrubner 11y ago
  Personal assistants are still common for high level executives. I have a friend who works as the personal assistant to someone very high up in Google. What has changed is that the middle-level managers no longer have secretaries. This probably has an upside, in terms of keeping the mid-level managers in touch with the tedious administrative nonsense that the lower level workers have to struggle with.
- arethuza 11y ago
  Only one of those tasks that I like having help with is travel planning and in that case you've got to have someone who is good and who you completely trust.
mioelnir 11y ago
I fondly remember at university, the secretary of one of the CS departments wrote all the snail-mail in vim, formatted in TeX. Then mailed it to the print-server.

coliveira 11y ago

The result of the removal of personal assistants is that today's workers need to spend a large chunk of their time doing secretarial work. For example, maintaining a public schedule, arranging travels, filling simple reports, typing simple code, sorting and answering standard email, could all be done by a personal assistant. This would increase the productivity of programmers and other knowledge workers. Instead, our society has evolved to make these chores a inevitable part of everybody's lives -- and as a result make money selling software that promises to help with these shores.

lkrubner 11y ago
Personal assistants are still common for high level executives. I have a friend who works as the personal assistant to someone very high up in Google. What has changed is that the middle-level managers no longer have secretaries. This probably has an upside, in terms of keeping the mid-level managers in touch with the tedious administrative nonsense that the lower level workers have to struggle with.
arethuza 11y ago
Only one of those tasks that I like having help with is travel planning and in that case you've got to have someone who is good and who you completely trust.

mioelnir 11y ago

I fondly remember at university, the secretary of one of the CS departments wrote all the snail-mail in vim, formatted in TeX. Then mailed it to the print-server.