"The New Geek"

beliavsky_at_aol.com
Date: 08/01/04 

Date: 31 Jul 2004 16:17:35 -0700

The question "how do I make a career out of programming" is often
asked here. I think a recent article in PC Magazine entitled "The New
Geek" at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1610398,00.asp is
informative. Here are three paragraphs that capture the main point.

"Davenport is one of the New Geeks, people who are technically trained
but also have the ability and inclination to work comfortably in other
disciplines like business, the sciences, and the social sciences. They
personify the future of computing as its impact spreads further.
Computing has already helped transform everything from the way
scientists plumb the mysteries of biology, chemistry, and physics to
the way Detroit designs cars and Hollywood makes movies. As it moves
increasingly beyond traditional calculation, computer science is
inevitably becoming more interdisciplinary, introducing the computing
arts to a wider circle of people.

The labor of this evolving breed of computationally minded yet broadly
skilled workers holds the key to new frontiers of technologically
enabled gains in productivity, economic growth, and higher living
standards. And the people are evolving in step with the tools, as has
always happened in computing.

In the late 1950s, FORTRAN opened up computing to engineers and
scientists by giving them a programming language that resembled the
mathematical formulas familiar to them. They could work at a higher
level instead of being mired in the innards of the machine, in its
memory registers and bit-thrashing quirks. That has been the general
trend ever since. The tools have moved the meeting point between
humans and computers—the line of communication, if you will—farther
toward people and away from the machine, thus inviting wave after wave
of new users."

Relevant Pages

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