After graduating in 1973 I went into the programming field.
I drove across country in my yellow 1970 VW bug (which I drove until 1986) to Los Angeles, having had enough cold weather in 5 years in Ann Arbor, and found a job within a few days.
I headed back to Ann Arbor, still having enough contacts there to get my job back at the Computing Center, and liking the city a lot.
I kept taking all the programming classes that I could as electives, and one of the really neat things about the U. of M. was that I could take all the computer classes that I wanted (undergrad or graduate), as long as I had the background.
I really liked Pascal, compared to the Fortran that I was used to, and was able to get a free Pascal compiler for the CDC mainframe to play with at Kitt Peak.
In 1975 I decided that there was no future in flying (airline jobs were impossible to get, and who wants a job where you are judged only by seniority?) and headed off to grad school.
It was not a good time for Aerospace Engineers (Boeing was laying off thousands of them) and I found programming more fun anyways.
My first encounter with computers was in 1968 as a Freshman engineering student at the University of Michigan, taking a required Fortran IV class.
My wife agreed, so in December of 1982 I turned in the final copy of my dissertation on a Wednesday, the packers came and packed the house on Thursday, they loaded the moving van Friday, and we left Tucson on Saturday.
One side benefit was that working at Kitt Peak I got to attend grad school at the University of Arizona for $5 per semester.
So the choice was living in Ann Arbor as a penniless grad student, or working full-time in Tucson (sunshine, warmth) and going to grad school for free. Away I drove in my VW bug for Tucson.
The next 8 years were spent working in New Haven for Health Systems International, which was lots of fun, but that's another story.
You can share a link to this page with your friend!