3 ms·

Since mother's day is around the corner, just curious, how many of you have mothers who are/were programmers?

by kqr2 18y ago

lionheart 18y ago
My mother is a programmer, quite frankly the best programmer I have ever met. But she doesn't like computers and says she longs for the old days when she would write out her program on a piece of paper, hand it to the technicians and get a print out of the results a day later.
- asimjalis 18y ago
  I am curious: does she edit her programs on Windows or Mac? The reason I ask is that I felt the same way until recently.
  - lionheart 18y ago
    Windows. Although I doubt using a Mac would change her mind, even if I could convince her to switch. It's kind of ironic, but she is completely like the clueless mothers everybody else complains about when it comes to technology. She needs help installing anything and I had to even set up her iPod for her. However, she is a phenomenal programmer because of her logical thought processes. She never planned on becoming a programmer, she wanted to be a mathematician and that is what her degree is in. When she graduated, there was a position for an "applied mathematician" and she was hired. Applied mathematics turned out to be programming and so that's what she became.
chaosmachine 18y ago
My mom taught me how to hack back in the early 90s :)
aristus 18y ago
My mom was hacking on a homebuilt Epson computer back in the 80's.
s3graham 18y ago
Yup, my Mum got me started in TRS-80 Basic when I was ~5-6. I didn't love "Outliers", but the Bill Gates story in there underlined how lucky I was to have someone give me a computer language in the early 80s.
gcheong 18y ago
Mine's not a programmer, but I once found a bunch of funny looking cards in our basement as a kid and I learned she used to work as a punchcard feeder. Maybe something rubbed off.
blasdel 18y ago
My mother was a programmer, she cut her teeth on a PDP-8 in high school. She met my father when they both worked at a database vendor in the early 80s, and they left together to found a PC software startup. Her stepmother was a programmer too, who was an early employee of a mainframe time-sharing company that turned into a PC software company. When they were bought out by Intuit a few years ago, she was the president of the company!
adw 18y ago
My mum learnt to program in Autocode at the end of the Sixties, and went on to do scary embedded stuff in fighter jets; when she went back to work after having kids, she wound up doing crypto. Me? I do web stuff. There's only one badass programmer in my family and it ain't me.
- wlievens 18y ago
  I think xkcd made a comic about your mom.

Since mother's day is around the corner, just curious, how many of you have mothers who are/were programmers?

by kqr2 18y ago

Since mother's day is around the corner, just curious, how many of you have mothers who are/were programmers?

My mother is a programmer, quite frankly the best programmer I have ever met. But she doesn't like computers and says she longs for the old days when she would write out her program on a piece of paper, hand it to the technicians and get a print out of the results a day later.

asimjalis 18y ago
I am curious: does she edit her programs on Windows or Mac? The reason I ask is that I felt the same way until recently.
- lionheart 18y ago
  Windows. Although I doubt using a Mac would change her mind, even if I could convince her to switch. It's kind of ironic, but she is completely like the clueless mothers everybody else complains about when it comes to technology. She needs help installing anything and I had to even set up her iPod for her. However, she is a phenomenal programmer because of her logical thought processes. She never planned on becoming a programmer, she wanted to be a mathematician and that is what her degree is in. When she graduated, there was a position for an "applied mathematician" and she was hired. Applied mathematics turned out to be programming and so that's what she became.

chaosmachine 18y ago

My mom taught me how to hack back in the early 90s :)

aristus 18y ago

My mom was hacking on a homebuilt Epson computer back in the 80's.

s3graham 18y ago

Yup, my Mum got me started in TRS-80 Basic when I was ~5-6. I didn't love "Outliers", but the Bill Gates story in there underlined how lucky I was to have someone give me a computer language in the early 80s.

gcheong 18y ago

Mine's not a programmer, but I once found a bunch of funny looking cards in our basement as a kid and I learned she used to work as a punchcard feeder. Maybe something rubbed off.

blasdel 18y ago

My mother was a programmer, she cut her teeth on a PDP-8 in high school. She met my father when they both worked at a database vendor in the early 80s, and they left together to found a PC software startup. Her stepmother was a programmer too, who was an early employee of a mainframe time-sharing company that turned into a PC software company. When they were bought out by Intuit a few years ago, she was the president of the company!

adw 18y ago

My mum learnt to program in Autocode at the end of the Sixties, and went on to do scary embedded stuff in fighter jets; when she went back to work after having kids, she wound up doing crypto. Me? I do web stuff. There's only one badass programmer in my family and it ain't me.

wlievens 18y ago
I think xkcd made a comic about your mom.