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I do low-level things mostly, so I start with: "The computer can only do extremely basic things that are pretty much limited to math operations, moving small am
by yan 17y ago
I do low-level things mostly, so I start with: "The computer can only do extremely basic things that are pretty much limited to math operations, moving small amounts of data within itself and sending simple signals to devices, all really fast. It took a nation of smart people working hard for many decades to take those simple actions and build up what it is today."
I can then jump in to talking about either vulnerability discovery, or reverse engineering, or operating systems, or even web programming.
- derwiki 17y agoI like the part about "a nation of smart people .. for decades." It has a very "if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" feel to it, and also touches on the fact that we ourselves generally deal with a small subset of All That Is Programming on a daily basis.
- bkovitz 17y agoThis idea of expressing interesting and useful things as mathematical operations sounds to me like it really gets to the essence of what we do. It not only gets the basic feel of our work across to a normal person very succinctly, it also gets across something of why we like it. The conversation can proceed to details and interesting examples, or not, but either way, the person has learned something truly important. Fantastic.