Saturday, November 30, 2013

James Mickens: The Night Watch


In his article The Night Watch computer science researcher James Mickens has described so succinctly what I have done for a living since 1976 that reading his article I alternated between laughing out loud (really) and weeping (almost).

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mickens/thenightwatch.pdf

(Human Computer Interaction) people discover bugs by receiving a concerned email from their therapist. Systems people discover bugs by waking up and discovering that their first-born children are missing and "ETIMEDOUT"' has been written in blood on the wall.

To say that this article sums up my day to day life for the past several decades is like saying the Universe is a middlin' large place. (And despite all that, it's been a very good life.)