Re: I have a crisis

On 15 Dec 2005 00:12:06 -0800, "marcwentink@xxxxxxxxxxx"
<marcwentink@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone
who said :

>. If I compare life now, with my youth in the
>80-ties, I see, in my place, the Netherlands

We certainly had some things better that today's kids.

I was able to put myself through all of university and have money left
over to lend to my parents. I did not need to borrow any money at
all. Granted I lived frugally, but that would be impossible today.

Sex without worrying about HIV was so much fun.

Anyone so inclined could take off and see the world. Today kids live
with their parents just to get food.

Employers courted you for jobs. You never had to ask.

As a 23 year old, I was able to buy a 4 bedroom house and pay it off
in about 10 years. You'd have to be a rock star to do that today.

I remember going to buy a new car in 1972. The salesman asked what car
I could afford. I haughtily replied, "any car, but that's not the
point. I don't want to spend any more on a car than necessary for my
practical needs."

Today young people just scrape by.

On the other hand, in 1969 if you were gay it was illegal to have sex,
even in private with a fellow 80 year old. And I received an average
of 3 death threats a day and 300 abusive phone calls a day from
Christians who were very upset I was publicly gay.

But back to computers. Speed and minimizing RAM use were much more
important then, with much less emphasis on maintainability. It was
rather fun to cook up tricky assembler to blow the boss's socks off.

Back then I talked to my fellows programmers about future programming
tools, what are now called IDEs. They thought I was mad. The pod
still is not here (a cockpit like pod you get into surrounded by
display panels, isolated from the distracting sounds) or the SCID see
http://mindprod.com/projects/scid.html. I also talked about what are
now called class libraries. I presented a lecture on the idea in 1979
at a computer club meeting and was hooted off the stage. I invented my
language Abundance with them and presented it in Byte Magazine in
1986.


--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Java custom programming, consulting and coaching.
.