Diary

Production Oct '78

Probably one of the most important concepts I've had is keeping money and work separate. One of the strongest focus in causing me to think has been the EDITX project. Another is MSoft of course. There were two main times I thought a lot about work and money prior to '78. They were the second half of Spring '77 and the 2nd 1/2 of summer '77. I will go over the highlights here.

The first topic is power vs the easy life OR excitement vs security OR self-employment vs a job OR reap profits vs good salary OR feeling bullish vs feeling free OR controlling or being controlled OR learned vs technical OR work with people vs work w/ computers OR responsibility vs caprice + freedome OR work vs fun OR leader vs helper OR being special vs more or less regular. The whole thing boils down to a question of how much personal involvement I want in my work. Do I have special concerns to tout or do I really want to shun such responsibilities as the employment

of others. How much do I want to work: not only how much time but how intensely, under how much pressure, tolerating how much boredom. Of course money enters into this but all of my personal needs are well taken care of except for extravagant items like houses, etc. So I should keep that separate and I will write about money under FINANCIAL.

One of the most important aspects is how much can you like your work and still be controlled by another, ie employed. I've been very fortunate working with small companies to always have had interesting work.

But I've always wondered how long this may last. At this writing (10/16/78) I have finished all most all technical work of COBOL except for trivial items. I understand how the COBOL system works. And I can (and probably will) go on to improve the system somewhat by working on PARSE+GENERATE sections of the compiler. But that is about the only thing I

care to continue to work on as far as software goes. I have learned most of the things I've always wondered about before this year; I've read Hauth and come to understand Sorthing systems (recommending SuperSorts heapsort technique) and Search systems (implement Wallman's DBMS in our COBOL). I have read Martin's book on DBMS. I have read two books on AI and have decided to put it off till it becomes more stable. I also know the most widely used language, COBOL, from the inside out and I have compared it with other languages of any major significance. I have no interest in FORTRAN or PL/I (too much too complex), and APL is not really appropriate for micros and I can't say I like it mcuh. All these major languages were quite stable by 1968 when I started to work on computers 10 years ago. Since then applications system have been implemented and flourished in them. Of course, the second generation of computers was introduced

in 1964 (360, etc) with multiprogramming and timesharing folllowed in the late 60's and early 70's so more people could have access to computers. And Micros started in 1974 and have revolutionized computing. The last 10 years have seen great advances. Also in the 70's have come sophisticated DBMS's that separate the conceptual from the logical and from the physical to aid in large applications systems and inquiry techniques. The 1970's have been an exciting time for computing. I have grown with it and I am destined to stay with it.

But in what capacity? I feel burnt out technically except for the implementation of new ideas and the mangement of reimplementation. That is, I'm willing to write more software in the compiler + any new runtime support but any reimplementation should be done by others whom I manage.

Editx used to be what made me special and then it was PET basic, now it is

COBOL. I think I want to stay with this for as long as it is interesting. I cannot implement it. That is a waste of my talents. I am important to my industry and I want to keep my position and grow with the industry. I have an image and respect and good knowledge.

NOW BACK TO my thoughts on Summer of '77. (The last few paragraphs are actually a digression of one main thought: that I will stay in computer work as long as it is interesting.) The primary thoughts of that summer revolved around Editx as I was interested in selling it to RMC in order to have money to start another new project. I wanted to work on a NEW thing because old thoughts (as of Editx) can hinder. I wanted to be free of Editx but I also wanted money to go on and do something new, hopefully something novel, not just a refinement such as Editx. I also wanted to forget Editx because it was so good and appropriate on the DEC10 but it just didn't seem to fit on an 8080.