For me, I can say that current life allows me to explore a blend of 1) Exploration, 2) Stability, 3) Cutting Edge and 4) Testing.
Throughout my life studying and exploring various types of computing has been in my veins. Once I decided upon pursuing a career with computers after taking a field trip with my 11th grade Algebra/Trigonometry class to the General Motors Research Labs (Research And Development | General Motors), I started using a teletypewriter with an acoustic coupler on it to communicate with a minicomputer at our county’s shared “Intermediate School District” offices. Good thing my high school was a member of that district - it gave me a FREE introduction to computers, albeit a clunky one.
From that I looked for a good place with a rich Math and Science curriculum with some kind of computer related degree. Michigan Technological University was the place of choice. In 1974 a Computer Science Department did not exist but a Computer Science Major was offered by the Department of Mathematics.
I learned about programming, design, Calculus, engineering principles, numerous programming languages, structured programming, data structures, as well as participating in project teams - probably the most helpful thing I learned!
As a professional, my organization was managing the company’s communication networks, so I learned more about the Telco industry than I did to become an accomplished programmer. In fact, that really was never a strength of mine, but understanding overall architecture, system planning and design were much more in my areas of strong understanding. In fact, I had wanted to become a systems analyst.
Once I got into UNIX systems, that greatly increased my interests; I thought I’d be an auto company employee for life; instead at least that experience got me into Telco stuff and that paved my way into a much longer career with Digital Equipment (13 1/2 years) Digital Equipment Corporation.
This is where I took that Telco background and they were able to get me into a Telco Standards organization, the T1Q1 National performance standards for telecommunications services | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore.
It’s also where I learned Digital operating systems - Long gone, DEC is still powering the world of computing - Ars Technica which included this: “In 1977, DEC introduced the VAX, a new line of minicomputers that featured a 32-bit instruction set architecture and virtual memory. Its operating system, VMS, was a multi-user, multitasking OS that provided features we now take for granted, including virtual memory, file sharing, and networking. It amassed a wide variety of third-party software packages that made it the most popular system in its class.”
Windows NT: " VMS=WNT
VMS was popular because DEC supported it so thoroughly. It had a user-friendly interface and powerful command-line tools, and it was one of the first operating systems to support networking protocols, including TCP/IP, DECnet, and SNA. It had a powerful file system that supported hierarchical directories and file permissions, and it was highly customizable.
In 1988, a senior VMS engineer named David Cutler joined Microsoft to lead the development of the Windows NT operating system. Windows NT was a major departure from previous Microsoft operating systems, as it was a 32-bit, multi-user, multitasking OS. Windows client, still finding its way to usability, was a 16-bit layer that ran over MS-DOS. It wasn’t really an operating system; it was more like a program launcher."
"The second piece of the puzzle is the CPU. Unless you use a Mac, your computer’s CPU has its roots in a DEC processor that failed in the market.
In the late 1980s early ’90s, DEC was looking to change with the times and evolve its VAX line. In 1992, it introduced the Alpha AXP, later shortened to just Alpha, a RISC-based processor designed to compete with the other RISC chips on the market such as Sun Microsystems SPARC and Hewlett-Packard’s PA-RISC."
“Alpha had more going for it than just 64 bits. It was faster than an Intel processor and had a more efficient instruction clock. The one thing it didn’t have going for it was software. DEC provided multiple operating systems: OpenVMS, Tru64 UNIX (previously named DEC OSF/1 AXP and Digital UNIX), and, for a very short period, Windows NT.”
I’ve used ALL of these operating systems, including the other operating systems the competition was using while I was at Digital (referenced in the citation, which I also used for the direct quotations).
I got into testing cutting edge stuff in the Digital Equipment ULTRIX and Digital UNIX operating systems because I had direct access to Nightly Builds, most prominently when I worked on the UNIX team, but even in the era in the Telco Systems Engineering Group I was in frequent conversations and meetings with Advanced Development organizations, so that’s where testing and bleeding edge come into the conversation for me.
As a retiree now, I’ve since worked, levering these skills, as a team coordinator for testing services and back to a test engineer before retiring.
I don’t remember everything, but I have a lot of perspectives to offer on a wide variety of general hardware and software, but legacy stuff and general information is where I can be of most value at this point.
