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50 years. Somewhat different to most. Mixed hardware/firmware/software, niche talents matched to niche markets. And practically all self-taught. Along the way got a BS and most of an MS in CS but none of it was applicable to my career, nor required for it, except the one class I keep alive was the FSM class. Perfect for Hard Real Time Event Driven applications. My metier. Almost all of the 50 years qualifies as nostalgia, even current, because it has all been fun, all been coninuous learning, all been continuous invention, and except for some esoteric math in my current Audio DSP path there has never been a book about it. 1967-9 accidentally hired at Elliott Automation UK as comissioning technician, finding bad wires/doa components in their 4100 series mainframes as they came to the end of the production line, prep for shipping. Completely discrete hand built machines, right down to hand-woven 48K x 24b main magnetic core memory. No prior experience outside of hobby electronics, only 19, CS did not exist then. This experience probably seeded all my first principles of computing, I had to teach myself in intimate detail how a room sized computer works, and how to program it. Both good and bad. 1969-71 (I know, by decade, but my trajectory does not fit decades easily) design engineer at an EG&G UK subsidiary called Nuclear Measurements. Another accident. Made instrumentation for the two main Nuclear Fusion labs Daresbury and Culham. Got to climb around inside the Zeta Pinch 1MF capacitor and the Tokamac. By chance visited a PCB layout researcher using my old 4130 with vector graphics, thesis on rats nest automatic layout techniques. 1971-5 Another poach, this time into data communications world. I'll note here that although I was then a hardware nut, programming computers is always an essential skill to have. And also in those days of really tight resources, doing it efficiently was default, whatever Tony had to say about premature optimization - the code has to at least fit before it can be made to work. In this phase I even had to design and write an ASM a custom computer a bit more featured than a Z80, only in SSI 7400 series TTL. And in 8008 days, no Z80 when I started. Still a big-eyed kid, somewhat bemused that folks wanted me to actually pay me to do all this learning. Learning that even today seems to be missing from CS/CE, at least as I can tell from graduate hires since then even up to today. Got very good at "Making it up as I went". There was no book, really, for what I was having to produce. 1975-89 moved to sister company in LA - poached again - got even deeper into data comms, designing Statistical Multiplexors and protocols for University time share computer centers. Employers made their $Ms but neglected to mention stock options to me. OTOH as a founder and tech lead I had a blast, and seeded a great dev lab culture around me, many of whom are still in touch. 1989-97 This was a really fun time; I and buddy did our own start up (Lone Wolf Technologies) based on a mission critical deterministic protocol we had dreamed up and a product using it to network MIDI synthesizers and controllers in large venues and pro studios. Moto 68HC11 box did 4 ports, glass fiber networking physical layer allowed up to 2 Km separation, multiple boxen, each with a mirrored virtual 16x2 config LCD onto the network as a compound entity (edit any box from any box), full soft topology routing and filtering and remapping. Yet more learning OTJ, and inventing. And the customer base was, well, rarified. Herbie Hancock, ELP, INXS, that rarified. Not actually a Good Thing as it transpired. No volume. But oh what fun. Then Paul Allen invested. A long story not for here. But moved us all to Seattle. 1998-9 designed a FPGA for autonomous isochronous multi-medial FireWire transport (AFAIK the only one that did not funnel channel data through the CPU). Was missing hardware, this was an intense but ultimately successful gig, eventually made its way back into music world as control surface driver/interface. 2000-7 Second time Lone Wolf, soon renamed SingleStep, designing a graphical programming/delivery platform aimed an large scale network management. Again great OJT learning and invention but customer base not so much fun. 2008-present now this one is a fun employer with a fun product. Not just fun to my nerd core - fun is their product. I refer to Nintendo. Worked on Audio engines for WiiU and Switch. The two big gaps: "Consulting Years". Nail biting, more like. No nostalgia for those. So, not your typical career path. No front end / back end / full stack crowded job market. I'd have been out of that and unemployable probably 20 years ago if that were the case. |