Smalltalk

Sheridan mentioned Smalltalk in her speech yesterday. It brought back an old memory. About ten years ago, when I was working for Intel, I wrangled a trip to Austin, ostensibly to interview for a job with Sematech, the semiconductor equipment manufacturers consortium. The guy I interviewed with was the inventor of Smalltalk. He asked me what I had learned at Intel, and I replied "nothing". Needless to say, I did not get the job, but it sure got me thinking. Here I had been busting my behind for years, trying to solve an endless stream of technical problems, and I had nothing to show for it. Oh, I had a vast quantity of facts at my disposal regarding the equipment and software I had been working with, but no one was interested, and it wasn't getting me anywhere career-wise. So even if I didn't learn anything at Intel, I learned something from this trip.