“You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”

Grandma and I have always found this quote quite funny. As a self-taught system administrator and programmer who began her career in the 80’s, she was usually the one explaining things to me.

She worked on computers that looked like this and this.

Ever the storyteller, she loved to relate her experiences.

• Her work brought her into contact with Bill Joy, Scott McNealy, and Steve Jobs.
• She was a vi evangelist (which is why I use Vim & Neovim as my daily drivers).
• She implemented Gopher systems. This was before the web as we know it today existed.
• She worked in organizations as they were connecting to the internet for the first time.
• She used operating systems which you never hear about today like Xenix and AIX.
• She was an expert in Solaris and passionate advocate of all things Sun.
• She wrote software in Ada, C, C++, Object Pascal, and Java 1.
• She implemented SOA (the ancestor to today’s microservices).
• She started a career in tech at a time when it was very rare for a woman to do so.
• She gave me an old PowerBook G3 which I used to learn how to build web sites.

When she came to visit, we would hang out in the Apple Store. She would open Terminal.app and explain how to use the command line and vim, sometimes attracting nervous glances from the store employees.

Her passion for her work had a large impact my career.

Thank you, Grandma.