In the 1970-71 school year, I was in First Year Pre-Honours Physics at the University of British Columbia (UBC), wondering how I got there. I somehow thought I would learn about RF (Radio Frequency) and Broadcast Engineering, but quickly realized that UBC specialized in the type of Physics used to build nuclear weapons.
Ever the ambitious soul, I had taken an extra Mathematics course that started in January (UBC was not semestered). It was my first exposure to computers. Even though the subject was Linear Programming, and the computer used to avoid getting bogged down in the endless calculations required to solve even the smallest problem, I immediately discovered that Computing was not the boring field I expected. Popular media had me believing that Computing and Accounting were closely linked, and totally repetitive and boring.
I switched my major to Computer Science, and did not miss a beat, as the first Computer Science course offered required that you be in at least Second Year.
My first paid employment in Computing was during the summer of 1973, when Pierre Trudeau created the Opportunities for Youth program, by opening up the Federal Government to summer students from across Canada. I worked in Ottawa and Hull for Environment Canada, converting their Groundwater Inventory system from an external service bureau (SDL) IBM mainframe to a government-owned Control Data (CDC) mainframe.
I graduated in April 1974, and went to Yellowknife to work for the Government of the North West Territories as a Programmer. I retired in January 2007 from Workers' Compensation Board - Alberta in Edmonton. My employment history is shown in the Where I've Been section.
Most of my career was spent as a Systems Programmer, Systems Manager, Systems Administrator or whatever it was called at the time. But it all boiled down to supporting the Operating System.
My career began and ended on the same platform: the IBM mainframe. And I spent most of the years in between there, too.
Although I specifically plan not to get involved in any Computing projects, I am converting my home office computing platform to Open Source, beginning with OpenOffice and ending with a move from Windows XP to SUSE Linux.
Jon Pearkins