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I just wanted to chime in that the reason I'm a programmer today is that my grandpa helped program the navigation systems on the SR-71. I found that slightly i
by fizx 17y ago
I just wanted to chime in that the reason I'm a programmer today is that my grandpa helped program the navigation systems on the SR-71. I found that slightly inspirational :)
- jacquesm 17y agoThat's so cool. Imagine, most of us don't even have dad programmers, and you have a granddad programmer and one working on such interesting stuff to boot. Is he still alive today? And if so does he still work with computers?
- fizx 17y agoHe passed (at 82, I believe) about seven years ago. It was both sad and not sad, as he lived a long and amazing life. He programmed the guidance systems of one of the Titan series rockets. He also was in the Navy in WWII. At one point, his destroyer was sunk, and spent a few days in the open ocean before being rescued. He was also present at the Japanese surrender ceremony. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of learning to play chess with him over Christmas vacation. He was a truly kind man, and an inspiration to many.
- jacquesm 17y agoQuite a guy, that's a grandfather to be truly proud of. You're privileged to have known someone like that from so near.
- ja27 17y agoMy dad passed away a few years ago. He worked in defense electronics for 30+ years. It's kind of weird that I know very little of what he actually worked on. I know he did a lot of work on what became GPS and on Tomahawk and F/A-18 projects, but so much of what he worked on will probably always be a mystery to me.
- scott_s 17y agoInteresting. My grandfather died about ten years ago at 86. He was in the Navy during WWII, and was among the first Americans in Tokyo after Japan surrendered. And after the war, he worked on the UNIVAC that was used for the census. We still have all of his UNIVAC programming manuals.
- blasdel 17y agoI'm a third-generation programmer too. My dad's dad was a programmer, as a desk-captain in the Navy right after WWII. He was still programming well into his retirement in the early nineties, writing little database apps for his PC. My dad started programming while working on his PhD at Berkley in the early sixties, well before UNIX. My mom's stepmom was an early non-technical employee of a computer accounting startup in the seventies (shared mainframes!), grew more and more technical as they transitioned to PCs, and eventually became the CEO. The company sold to Intuit a while back and she was a VP there for a few years. My mom started programming around the same time, her high school had access to a PDP somewhere. My parents met when they both worked at a PC database vendor (Condor) in the early eighties, got married, and founded a startup together by poaching one of their customers (which lasted about 20 years).
- malbs 17y agoThird generation programmer here too. My grandfather worked on the guidance systems for the Australian missile program run out of Woomera. Both my uncles are programmers, and my mother is a programmer too. It's kind of the 'family trade'
- stcredzero 17y agoSlightly? The account was so moving in its description of supreme, beautiful engineering achievement, I f-in cried -- no joke.
- jrockway 17y agoWhat's really sad is that 70s-era technology is better than what we have today. No more SR-71. No more Concorde.
- stcredzero 17y agoThat's kinda true for software too. Symbolics Lisp machines still have features that no other OS/IDEs have.
- jrockway 17y agoEmacs?
- saurabh 17y agoPlease elaborate.
- stcredzero 17y agoExample: Anything that printed out something anywhere automatically generated a hyperlink to open an inspector on the underlying objects. No additional coding necessary. The facility was provided through around inheritance in MOP.
- RevRal 17y agoSup "my grandpa was an engineer/programmer for the blackbird" buddy :). Maybe they knew each other ! Did he like to hold cool confidential information over your head, too? Like how fast the blackbird could really go?
- whalesalad 17y agoThat is pretty exciting and inspirational :) I owe a lot of what I do today to my parents/grandparents as well... pretty much everyone on my dad's side of the family has worked or is currently still working for Lockheed at their Skunk Works plant (the guys that did the SR-71) in Palmdale, CA. My dad and grandpa were both illustrators, drawing out schematics and stuff for Lockheed. I really think a lot of my design abilities are genetic, and I owe it to my dads side of the family.