Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class
In 19 and 82 or 3, I worked at Lockheed Shipyard in Seattle, in a sort of tech writing capacity on a Navy ship building project, based on my recent experience in the Navy. The business closed with completion of the ships.<p>We had to fill out lots of forms that documented what we called &quot;analysis,&quot; and we&#x27;d often have to change them based on some factor changing. One change could cascade through the whole form.<p>Paper forms. Green see-through plastic letter guides. Whiteout. Lots of whiteout.<p>We had access to a department mini computer, don&#x27;t remember what it was. The language might have been Basic-like, but I didn&#x27;t know enough to recognize it as such.<p>I figured out how to write and run programs, someone showed me how to print, and I wrote a program that would accept values for all a form&#x27;s fundamental values, and cascade those through calculations for the dependent values, and print out the filled in form. You could save it, update a new value, re-cascade, and print it out again. No more whiteout.<p>Part of the calculation involved sorting. I didn&#x27;t know anything about sorting, so I implemented what I later learned was bubble sort. Because that&#x27;s obviously how you&#x27;d do that.<p>The system administer noticed more load when people ran my program. He found me, and told me not to do that again.<p>I learned that there was a thing called a system administrator. He might have given me a better canned sort, don&#x27;t remember.<p>I eventually thought it would be a good idea to quit and go to school, so I did.<p>(I took a number theory class, but had to drop it. I don&#x27;t have the math nature.)