Mom wasn't always right

"You won't be carrying a calculator in your pocket all the time!" - Several of my math teachers

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"Calculators can't solve word problems!" Line also seems to be failing the test of time lol

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- Until you need to verify if the computer understood and solved the problem properly
  
  It's like, sure, a calculator can help you solve equations.. but what is the proper equation for the situation?
  
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- Considering the CO2 output of ai, I'd say they're creating more problems.
  
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- I wrote a program to solve wordle. It works pretty okay
  
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Math Teacher: You won’t be carrying a calculator with you every where you go.

Me: Umm actually I will.

Math teacher: yeah but in the future Microsoft will force you to log in to use the calculator App, harvest your data and sell it to your insurance company forcing you to pay thousands more.

Me: Oh umm, I’ll be using Android?

Teacher: LOL, Ok.

Me: Ok, I’ll just carry a regular calculator around.

Teacher: Trust me if you don’t want to be a nerd you need to stay inside and do your homework.

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I had one on my wrist just to spite them throughout much of my school career.

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I would argue the problem is not having a calculator in my pocket but getting it out of my pocket when I'm juggling a baby.

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- The trick is to throw the baby higher than the calculator so you have time to press a few buttons on the calculator each time.
  
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I give my mom credit. In the 80's she found summer classes for me where I could learn about programming.

To this day I'm not sure if she was responding to an interest I expressed, or if she planted the interest in my mind. However, for more than 30 years people have been paying me to stare at computer screens all day.

Thanks, Mom!

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I give my mom credit. In the 80’s she found summer classes for me where I could learn about programming.

In the early 80s we we NOT well off. However, our entire household chose to go without christmas (and went into debt) to buy a Commodore 64 computer. It allowed me to experiment, make mistakes, and learn in a safe environment. When I started using computers in school was already very comfortable with it. When I started in the working world, I was not only comfortable, but highly knowledgeable about using and fixing computers.

My sibling and I are both successful IT professionals. I absolutely attribute having that computer (even a very under powered c64) in the house growing up.

14

She was right. They're actually paying me to stare at my phone most of the time I'm supposed to be staring at the computer screen.

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      IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
      PROGRAM-ID. YOURWRNG.
      ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
      PROCEDURE DIVISION.
          DISPLAY 'YOU WERE WRONG MOM'.
          STOP RUN.

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Dammit, I can't tell if YOURWRNG has the incorrect version of you're!

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- You r wrng 🙄
  
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- That's the fun thing about some of the older systems. Program names were limited to eight or ten characters so you had to get creative with naming within a library (basically the equal of a folder on AS/360 ... AS/400 systems) if it got large.
  
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My mom supported me all the time, while I was failing first my Electrical Engineering, then my Environmental Science degree.
She still trusted I would make it!
And now I am better off than her and my dad, and can financially support my partner's dreams, simply by doing what I did for fun while I was failing my studies.

My mom couldn't have known that, and she doesn't fully understand why I make so much money doing this, but she always believed in me.

Thanks, mom!

21

As a child I was derided for doing the least amount possible. As an engineer that's exactly what I get paid to do. Take that Mom.

18

"You will never have a job where you can wear comfortable clothes"

To this day that's been wrong about 99% of my working life

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we had to put signs up around one office I worked at warning when clients would be dropping by, because half of the back office worked in pajamas most days

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- And these days, the customers are just as likely to be casual.
  
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- Haha that's great
  
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80's mommies were often wrong, but never about bad girls.

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That ain't the way to have fun, son.

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Wait for another 40 years and let's see

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Is that an Atari 400 or 800?

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You can tell because the keyboard doesn't actively make you want to kill and/or die.
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- I had a solar-powered pocket calculator with a membrane once. Credit-card-sized. You can tell I was a nerd because I owned three pocket calculators at the same time.
  
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- Didn't they both have the shitty shift/atari button thing?
  
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- Oh that is terrible
  
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- LOL, my friend had the 400. We all hated it.
  
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The 400 if you acidentally stepped on it it'd flip back and bark your shin, you'd fall over and put your foot through it. that's why there's so few today.

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