That's Not Programming

I was a draftsman's aide, drawing black lines on smooth sheets of velum. It was the dawn of the computer age. Or maybe not. It was 1978. It seemed like the dawn to me.

One day toward the end of summer, I went to talk to an engineer who sat in a cubicle at the periphery of the open room full of drafting tables.

He had a programmable calculator. My dad had recently bought me one. Mine was a TI. His was an HP.

Have you programmed it? he asked.

The quadratic equation, I said, proud that I could answer in the affirmative.

That's not programming, he said.

I've never known quite what to make of that. Yes. I'm aware of Boehm and Jacopini and that my modest effort had no 'iteration'. But somehow I don't think that's what he meant.

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