Re: As I remember things

[kredburn@echip.com (K Redburn)]

> Like most of you, I managed to gain my priv account (1,44) pretty rapidly,
> complete with annoying some of the folks who preceded me.  I was given a
> real "assignment" - lead 3 other HS students to create a flat database that
> could be used to generate labels.  Expecting a 16-year old to manage a
> project, even one as simple as this, was ludicrous.  I was unable to
> motivate the other programmers and, to be honest, I was much more
> interested in playing with the OS.  I repeatedly asked Ed Boas for help,
> and in the end he "demoted" me.
> 

Ah yes, the label project.  I was moved onto that by Ed Jones after my
sucess at reconfiguring the lost file names of an imported humanities
program.  All I can remember about that thing was it was a ton of files,
no one new which were program and which were data. We had a listing of
what the original names of the files were, but not which were which. 
Fun!  But I got it put together.

The label project.  Also my first initiation into linked lists (one of
BASIC's strongest features!) I don't know whether you picked this up
from me or I picked it up from you ed,  but I had the code dumped into
my lap and was told "Make it do this.."  I got a lot done, but but when
I tried to convince them to just re-write it from the ground up they
were not responsive.  (or maybe they were and I caused your head
aches.)  In any case that software was sort of my down fall.  Ed Jones
kept threatening me with loss of account but I was only months away from
graduating and just didn't care.  I lost my account and started work at
the DuPont experimental station, where they game me the whole machine.  
It was one thing to let students run the computer and to learn and grow
from that. It was entirely another thing to make them into software
slaves.  When I left, people had projects and hours tracked, all for the
priviledge of getting an account with which to do the work.  Kind of
like paying me to dig a ditch for you by lending me the shovel to do it
with.  

One important lesson Delta taught me, that severed me well as a
consultant later, is you get the kind of programming you pay for. 
Making kids do essentially contract and administrative programming tasks
in exchange for priv accounts was not one of Delta's finer
accomplishments.

Kendall