I realized that it was odd that in a personal web and blog I didn't
have any pages related to the subject that I'm most deeply involved in:
COMPUTING. Computer science, software engineering, computer systems
architecture - the stuff that I do for a living, and for which I'm best
known (if Google is to be trusted). Now of course this not
strictly true: my background page gives
copious details of my professional life, and includes references to
various products, technologies, and standards efforts on which I've
worked. However that's not quite what I'm looking for. It is also the
case that some of what I work on is highly confidential, commercially
sensitive, etc. etc. And I must admit that I spend so much of my time
working on computer-related stuff that this web and blog represents a
pleasant opportunity to talk about something else - politics,
philosophy, religion, even buses and planes.
Nonetheless, there are computer-related topics that I'd like to
discuss outside the four walls of my office at Sun Microsystems, and this seems like a
good place to do that. This may be an overweening vanity on my part,
but I think that greybeards such as myself who have been in computing
for many years have actually got some interesting insights to
share. (Besides, a blog is an exercise in vanity, n'est-ce pas?) So on this page (and
probably a supporting web - who knows where this will go) I'm going to
post some of what I've learned since I got into this area in 1968.