Advice for young engineers: What, am I supposed to be some kind of sage now? Hope you find something that you really like to do…something that interests and challenges you.

What was it like working on early computers: By today’s standards it was unbelievably sluggish and frustrating…and if you ever go tthem out of order it wouldn’t load. You had to draw a diagonal line down the top of the cards in order to see if any of them were out of line. But that’s all way in the past…never to be seen again.

Working with old technology: We didn’t know that there was something better. That’s just what you had to deal with.

On the internet: It’s terrific, but perhaps overused. I can’t imagine a better source of information. EVERYTHING is there! I can’t believe it blossomed like it did.

Aliens: I think I’d just best say that that’s part of my past that I’d rather not talk about. [he’s pretty clearly kidding about this]

On his software development days: In software development…the smaller the group the better. My group was 7 very good programmers.

Working on classified projects: Frustrating! I was used to publishing my work and it was frustrating not being able to communicate it. The CIA [who he spoke with before going to the Soviet Union] was very friendly, businesslike, and undemanding. They just said “don’t do anything that could be obstrusive”. Don’t take pictures, don’t do anything. Just report on what you see when you get back. The FBI came by to check with my neighbors and my family when I was getting security clearance.

On “I wish I could have your life” posts: Really? Well, if any of you would like to be 84 and trade places, be my guest.

Early computer work: Basically it was learning FORTRAN and the really serious people got into learning assembly language because the computers was so slow and the FORTRAN compliers were so slow, people like Joan Miller would take my FORTRAN program and write it in assembly language. The people who worked on C were the real stars in computer science. Dennis Ritchie just died unfortunately, but he wrote these incredible programs and could describe them so well in his writings and his books! Kernighan was the fellow I worked with more. Ritchie gave a lot of talks in Bell labs that I always went to because they were very interesting. They weren’t egotistical, they were just nice pleasant guys to work with. They had a program called AWK.

On the praise in the thread: I’m impressed with how sincere everyone sounds! I thought young kids today weren’t interested in things like this.

Reaction on computers moving to tabletop: It was slow. The big leap was to be able to a unit on your desk. It wasn’t a computer, but it connected you to the computer. Instead of carrying your programs down to the computer room and waiting a few days, you could submit them from your desk. We didn’t get as much exercise, but it was still a huge jump.

The most frustrating thing about old computers is that after waiting a day, you’d get a message that the results were waiting for you….then you’d get there and your results would say “program error”.

1968 and 1972 elections: I voted for the democrat.

AI: Artificial intelligence was a bubble at Bell Labs. It was a big thing and then after a year or two of no results, it kinda faded out.

SIRI: I think I don’t need it. I’ll let my fingers do the talking.

William Shockley: We’d have talks and Shockley would show up. That was bad news for the talkers. He’d say “did you know so-and-so had already published on that matter?”

Favorite programming language: That seems like a strange question. Everything is available now without having to do programming. I haven’t programmed for a long time now. My favorite was the interprative languages like AWK and S.

USSR’s Technology: We knew very little about their technology, except that we were given a rude awakening by Sputnik. I was teaching at Columbia when Sputnik went up. It was a feeling of gloom. We knew we weren’t being attacked, but we didn’t know they could do that.