Twenty Years of Geek Girl-ing
We’ve come a long way, baby.
I recently read a number of articles talking about what women in tech face daily. The one trending on medium currently was written by a developer with three years in the industry.
Her experience is absolutely valid of course, but it only tells part of the picture. We’re missing the experience of the greybeards. In tech, the greybeards are the developers who came before you — the ones you go to for advice and wisdom. We’ve been around and have seen all sorts of things. We’re usually willing to share wisdom in exchange for coffee, chocolate, or whiskey.
Yes, women can be greybeards too. Really. Doesn’t require actual facial hair.
The Greybeard That’s Me
I got my first Unix certificate from Bell Labs back when I was in the Army. Yes, THE Bell Labs that created the B and C programming languages…along with a little operating system called Unix. I went back a while later when they became Lucent.
The first operating system I was an admin on was System V rel 3. There were terminals and green screens. I have even used magic mode in recovery.
