I’m happy for you that you escaped.
Then the sentiment was retold over and over for close to two decades.
This reminds of a salient question I encountered. I wish I could remember the author and book to quote directly but here’s my best approximation of their meaning:
Why is it that you need to go to church every week and study the same book over and over to understand god’s message? Once you learn 1+1=2 you’re done, no need to read the same thing over and over.
Probably because their parents sucked.
Hopefully jpeterson2005 breaks the suck cycle.
Edit: or jpreston2005
And computer networking, especially the ability to remote into a system and make changes or deliver updates en masse, was nowhere near as robust as it is today meaning a lot of those fixes were done manually.
we are seeing multidimensional cross sections of them, which give them such an otherworldly appearance
Accurate or not I’ve always liked Vonnegut’s description of the viewpoint from the 4th dimension to the 3rd:
“The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don’t see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millepedes—“with babies’ legs at one end and old people’s legs at the other,” says Billy Pilgrim.
Except at the speed of light?
I’ve been following the progress on this for a while. Pretty awesome stuff.
Something like this?
Bowser says the people he worked with weren’t very social and he helped “testers” troubleshoot devices. “I started becoming a middleman in between the people doing the development work, and the people actually owning the mod chips, playing the games,” he says. “I would get feedback from the testers, and then I would send it to the developers … I can handle people, and that’s why I ended up getting more involved.”
Bob Slydell : What you do at Initech is you take the specifications from the customer and bring them down to the software engineers?
Tom Smykowski : Yes, yes that’s right.
Bob Porter : Well then I just have to ask why can’t the customers take them directly to the software people?
Tom Smykowski : Well, I’ll tell you why, because, engineers are not good at dealing with customers.
Bob Slydell : So you physically take the specs from the customer?
Tom Smykowski : Well… No. My secretary does that, or they’re faxed.
Bob Porter : So then you must physically bring them to the software people?
Tom Smykowski : Well. No. Ah sometimes.
Bob Slydell : What would you say you do here?
Tom Smykowski : Well–well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don’t have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can’t you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
Right off the chain.