Not that old but I started in the late 90s without a degree.
Hasn't hurt my career so far, the people my level are a mix of degree/no degree.
Had to go back and fill in the theory I missed over time as I've needed it occasionally.
I still hold that programming for the real world should be taught as an apprenticeship, throwing people from CS into a software developer role is just unfair.
I'm sure someone here has a better explanation for a connection I've been thinking about (and saw on twitter, for what it's worth), so I figured I'd ask here.
I've never looked that much into knitting, but the instructions seem remarkably similar to assembly language instructions. Beyond that, I did a little bit of research into a jacquard loom works the other day, and realized it operated using punch cards. This really fascinates me, because it seems to precede Babbage's machine and yet I never have read particularly much treatment of it in history of computing type treatises.
I wonder if, given some of the conventionally more feminine stereotyped gender roles pertaining to knitting and clothmaking, any of this played into what early conceptions of what a "programmer" was? Was there a point where people reasonably made the inference that the closest analog for what early punch card programming was would be jacquard loom operation and knitting? It is fascinating how it the idea of the vocation of writing software flipped the other way in terms of gender stereotypes.
My girlfriend's into crocheting. One day I went with her to the craft store and she got a few pattern books. I looked through a bunch of them and my first thought was 'oh, shit, they're all a bunch of computer programs'. I'd never really thought too much into it before, but my girlfriend explained how the patterns work to me and they're basically lines of code. There's even rudimentary loops and if statements.
Now I'm wondering if anyone's ever looked into making a Turing complete 'knitting instruction set' or ever looked into whether knitting was in fact Turing complete and if not, how to make it so. Would make for an interesting master's thesis or something. I'd read that paper.
I think you're right. Knitting patterns are inherently algorithmic, and the notation of knitting patterns contains abstractions very similar to control flow abstractions we use in computing, such as for loops and conditional logic. In addition, knitters tend to reduce each section of a complex pattern into reusable modular sets of instructions, and they also reduce individual instructions into a short set of glyphs.
I am a software engineer, and my wife is a champion knitter - she knits sweaters with cabling or colorwork. She is not a software engineer by trade, but she does construct complex software for modeling primate behavior in the wild (she's a PhD candidate), so I definitely see her applying the same skillset in both contexts.
I don't think, based on my own family history, that the vague stereotypes you're talking about had anything to do with why women did or didn't become programmers early on. Do you assume men weren't involved in the textile industry?
What happened (anecdotally) is that early in the history of computers, it wasn't possible to get into an engineering program for any reasonably bright woman. They're like "of course we admit women, but we already have a woman". The punch line being that they didn't even have one woman as an undergraduate. So maybe you go to a woman's college, and maybe you study math, and then you end up working as an assistant to an engineer, who is analogous to a secretary, taking engineering problems and coding them.
[Edit: I have or had a picture of the person I'm describing with a non-industrial knitting machine, but probably considerably later than the 50s when she started programming]
There's an episode of James Burke's Connections that explores this idea with a bit of depth, I recommend watching the whole series if you have the time.
It's an interesting idea but I don't think it holds up. The earliest tabulators didn't use punch cards to store "programs" but to encode data, and the mechanical work of punching data into cards, then processing those cards, was fairly rote. "Programming" those machines meant rewiring, as it did for quite a few generations of technology. So while the card handling was certainly done by both men and women [0], I think it's a stretch to suppose it bridged weaving and later (stored program) programming.
Others here will probably have personal memories of the late mainframe era, but my understanding is that even then writing code and punching it on to cards were not necessarily done by the same person, with code first written out long hand on special forms then punched by a specialist. [1]
I came across these two garment/gaming crossover devices recently. One was a special knitting attachment for a NES of all things, but I think it was unreleased. Also found a series of sewing machines that worked with GameBoy Color, if I remember correctly.
I think the market wasn’t ready for that then, but perhaps with devices like the Raspberry Pi, 3D printing, and the right software, a new loom boom could be reborn.
Not the question you're asking, but it's always been interesting to me how fibers and written language are intertwined. We talk about strings of characters. Text and textile come from the same word.
>Given a complex customer problem, a female analyst/programmer will often handle the problem better than would her male colleagues with equivalent experience and ability. Not because businessmen are more lenient or show favoritism toward the female of the species, but because the female is often more sensitive to the nuances of a problem and to the complex interpersonal relations that may be part of the problem. In a very real sense, every computer problem with a customer is also a customer relations problem, and this is where feminine tact, insight, and intuition, combining with solid programming and analytical ability, can really pay off for the girl programmer.
The book is "brilliant" because of quips like the aforementioned.
Now, lets flip the genders and see who gets to keep their head.
Please don't take the flamiest baitiest thing and start the discussion rolling downhill like this. It's exactly the opposite of what we're hoping for. Rather, you should comment on the most interesting thing. If there isn't anything interesting, or you don't have anything to say about it, please don't post. The idea is curious conversation.
This is particularly important when a thread is new, because threads are sensitive to initial conditions. You wouldn't spill oil in a lake or toss litter in a park, so please don't do that here either.
Considering the book was written in 1967, that is a strikingly insightful observation.
Taken in modern terms - “soft skills” (which were valued and expected in women, and not valued if not actively discouraged in men) are often at least as important as raw programming ability.
[+] [-] RickJWagner|5 years ago|reply
I started programming professionally in 1990. This is how many of the older colleagues I started with got their starts.
[+] [-] noir_lord|5 years ago|reply
Hasn't hurt my career so far, the people my level are a mix of degree/no degree.
Had to go back and fill in the theory I missed over time as I've needed it occasionally.
I still hold that programming for the real world should be taught as an apprenticeship, throwing people from CS into a software developer role is just unfair.
[+] [-] yowlingcat|5 years ago|reply
I've never looked that much into knitting, but the instructions seem remarkably similar to assembly language instructions. Beyond that, I did a little bit of research into a jacquard loom works the other day, and realized it operated using punch cards. This really fascinates me, because it seems to precede Babbage's machine and yet I never have read particularly much treatment of it in history of computing type treatises.
I wonder if, given some of the conventionally more feminine stereotyped gender roles pertaining to knitting and clothmaking, any of this played into what early conceptions of what a "programmer" was? Was there a point where people reasonably made the inference that the closest analog for what early punch card programming was would be jacquard loom operation and knitting? It is fascinating how it the idea of the vocation of writing software flipped the other way in terms of gender stereotypes.
[+] [-] grawprog|5 years ago|reply
Now I'm wondering if anyone's ever looked into making a Turing complete 'knitting instruction set' or ever looked into whether knitting was in fact Turing complete and if not, how to make it so. Would make for an interesting master's thesis or something. I'd read that paper.
[+] [-] adeeshaek|5 years ago|reply
An example of a particularly complex pattern can be found here, if you are interested: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/the-queen-susan-sha...
I am a software engineer, and my wife is a champion knitter - she knits sweaters with cabling or colorwork. She is not a software engineer by trade, but she does construct complex software for modeling primate behavior in the wild (she's a PhD candidate), so I definitely see her applying the same skillset in both contexts.
[+] [-] perl4ever|5 years ago|reply
What happened (anecdotally) is that early in the history of computers, it wasn't possible to get into an engineering program for any reasonably bright woman. They're like "of course we admit women, but we already have a woman". The punch line being that they didn't even have one woman as an undergraduate. So maybe you go to a woman's college, and maybe you study math, and then you end up working as an assistant to an engineer, who is analogous to a secretary, taking engineering problems and coding them.
[Edit: I have or had a picture of the person I'm describing with a non-industrial knitting machine, but probably considerably later than the 50s when she started programming]
[+] [-] thirdhaf|5 years ago|reply
James Burke Connections, Ep. 4 "Faith in Numbers"
[+] [-] awhitby|5 years ago|reply
Others here will probably have personal memories of the late mainframe era, but my understanding is that even then writing code and punching it on to cards were not necessarily done by the same person, with code first written out long hand on special forms then punched by a specialist. [1]
[0] First, at scale, in the 1890 US census. I just published a book with a chapter on this: http://www.thesumofthepeople.com
[1] e.g. as described here https://code.likeagirl.io/the-first-program-i-ever-wrote-5a5...
[+] [-] TrinaryWorksToo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aspenmayer|5 years ago|reply
I think the market wasn’t ready for that then, but perhaps with devices like the Raspberry Pi, 3D printing, and the right software, a new loom boom could be reborn.
https://kotaku.com/this-long-lost-nintendo-knitting-machine-...
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/11/there-really-was-a-sewing-ma...
[+] [-] charleskinbote|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://thestrangeloop.com/2018/its-just-matrix-multiplicati...
[+] [-] zachrose|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 99_00|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cachvico|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] troughway|5 years ago|reply
The book is "brilliant" because of quips like the aforementioned.
Now, lets flip the genders and see who gets to keep their head.
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
This is particularly important when a thread is new, because threads are sensitive to initial conditions. You wouldn't spill oil in a lake or toss litter in a park, so please don't do that here either.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] LyndsySimon|5 years ago|reply
Taken in modern terms - “soft skills” (which were valued and expected in women, and not valued if not actively discouraged in men) are often at least as important as raw programming ability.