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Great story and I can relate. In the late '80's I worked as a summer engineering intern at a civil engineering company. They assigned me to train the crochety

Great story and I can relate. In the late '80's I worked as a summer engineering intern at a civil engineering company. They assigned me to train the crochety draftsmen on AudCAD, but they wanted nothing to do with it. To paint a picture, these guys were hunching over drafting tables using pencils and erasers to draw their drawings, while chain smoking the whole time. An ash tray would be placed on the center of the drawing. Needless to say, my summer project was not a success! :-)

disqard 3y ago
(You inspired me to riff on this and extrapolate, so here goes...) Great story and I can relate. In the late '20s I worked as an ML intern at a tech company. They assigned me to train the crotchety programmers on prompt engineering, but they wanted nothing to do with it. To paint a picture, these folks were hunching over IDEs using keyboards and mice to type in their code, while cursing at the compiler the whole time. An internal chat/discussion/meme forum would be open on a browser tab on their second monitor. Needless to say, my summer project was not a success! :-) (Let's revisit this comment of mine in a decade or two, if HN still exists)
acomjean 3y ago
I worked at a government agency in the early 90s. We had drafts people. One of the big issues was computer cad took longer and the drawings looked worse. Printing blueprint size was difficult. They drawing were on some wierd “vellum” like semi transparent material so they could make copies in the blueprint room which always smelled like ammonia. Of course once you had edits the manual drawing speed advantage went away and plotting/printing tech soon caught up. One of the drafts people had a power eraser that would sound a round white eraser tip like a drill.
- jimmydddd 3y ago
  Re: Amonia Agreed. When I wasn't "teaching" AutoCAD, I was making blueprints on the blueprint machine, which was in a small closet-sized room filled with air that seemed to be 80% ammonia.

disqard 3y ago

(You inspired me to riff on this and extrapolate, so here goes...) Great story and I can relate. In the late '20s I worked as an ML intern at a tech company. They assigned me to train the crotchety programmers on prompt engineering, but they wanted nothing to do with it. To paint a picture, these folks were hunching over IDEs using keyboards and mice to type in their code, while cursing at the compiler the whole time. An internal chat/discussion/meme forum would be open on a browser tab on their second monitor. Needless to say, my summer project was not a success! :-) (Let's revisit this comment of mine in a decade or two, if HN still exists)

acomjean 3y ago

I worked at a government agency in the early 90s. We had drafts people. One of the big issues was computer cad took longer and the drawings looked worse. Printing blueprint size was difficult. They drawing were on some wierd “vellum” like semi transparent material so they could make copies in the blueprint room which always smelled like ammonia. Of course once you had edits the manual drawing speed advantage went away and plotting/printing tech soon caught up. One of the drafts people had a power eraser that would sound a round white eraser tip like a drill.

jimmydddd 3y ago
Re: Amonia Agreed. When I wasn't "teaching" AutoCAD, I was making blueprints on the blueprint machine, which was in a small closet-sized room filled with air that seemed to be 80% ammonia.