> I was hired as a physicist with requirement for some programming. Almost immediately I was a programmer with a bit of physics. > I first worked on surface ac

> I was hired as a physicist with requirement for some programming. Almost immediately I was a programmer with a bit of physics. > I first worked on surface acoustic waves for signal processing - most computational intensive part of the business. Other teams were laying out chips with Rubylith. > Learnt by doing, occasional mentoring from more experienced team member, reading the manual. > A lot of issue fixing was done by poring over printouts. A lot of trial and error. > I didn't do talent hunting in those days. > News was in journal articles, 'trade' magazines, user groups (proceedings distributed on magnetic tapes). We had terminals connected to our main computer, a connection to a remote university computer (slow) and networks to other sites within the business. New software would be delivered on magnetic tape, also used for backup. Some measurement data was transferred via paper tape. Data was mostly measured, processed and printed out. Archive versions of code were stored on printout.