That's so cool. Imagine, most of us don't even have dad programmers, and you have a granddad programmer and one working on such interesting stuff to boot.
Is he still alive today? And if so does he still work with computers?
Is he still alive today? And if so does he still work with computers?
He programmed the guidance systems of one of the Titan series rockets. He also was in the Navy in WWII. At one point, his destroyer was sunk, and spent a few days in the open ocean before being rescued. He was also present at the Japanese surrender ceremony.
Some of my fondest childhood memories are of learning to play chess with him over Christmas vacation. He was a truly kind man, and an inspiration to many.
You're privileged to have known someone like that from so near.
My grandfather worked on the guidance systems for the Australian missile program run out of Woomera.
Both my uncles are programmers, and my mother is a programmer too.
It's kind of the 'family trade'
My dad's dad was a programmer, as a desk-captain in the Navy right after WWII. He was still programming well into his retirement in the early nineties, writing little database apps for his PC. My dad started programming while working on his PhD at Berkley in the early sixties, well before UNIX.
My mom's stepmom was an early non-technical employee of a computer accounting startup in the seventies (shared mainframes!), grew more and more technical as they transitioned to PCs, and eventually became the CEO. The company sold to Intuit a while back and she was a VP there for a few years. My mom started programming around the same time, her high school had access to a PDP somewhere.
My parents met when they both worked at a PC database vendor (Condor) in the early eighties, got married, and founded a startup together by poaching one of their customers (which lasted about 20 years).