My First Programming Job in 1981, and How It Shaped My Career

The point that I liked most was:

Doing the impossible can be a lot of fun, either you succeed and be the hero, or if you fail, well, it's impossible.

It is just amazing how Andrew volunteered for lot of hard things and did them, like finishing a software from scratch in a week and so on.

I am a regular reader of his blog and the moment I found that he had coded for F-16(though it's not clear if his code flew or now), my respect increased exponentially for him! ;)

Very entertaining read. And the lessons he mentions from the 80s still mostly apply.

But the one that caught my eye was point #4: Knowing how to read and understand source code is a valuable skill.

I definitely agree. Nonetheless, having worked in four different countries, it always surprises me to meet so many people that are not actually any good at it working as programmers/developers/software engineers! :-/

Sorta off-topic, but the F-16 was flying long before 1981. I presume he was working on software re-writes or modifications of the existing systems.

Meta: I think the prefix (up to the colon) should be removed, it's very redundant and not even part of the post's actual title.

This should be a movie.