Re: Happy 7-8-9!

On Jul 10, 2:23�pm, ellice <egir...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 7/9/09 9:15 PM, �"Olwyn.Mary" <Olwynm...@xxxxxxx> wrote:





ellice wrote:
On 7/9/09 5:04 PM, �"Olwyn.Mary" <Olwynm...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

ellice wrote:

On 7/9/09 7:32 AM, �"lucretiabor...@xxxxx" <lucretiabor...@xxxxx> wrote:

On Wed, 8 Jul 2009 21:33:12 -0600, "Dawne Peterson"
<valky...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Bruce Fletcher wrote

Dawne Peterson wrote:

"Bruce Fletcher �wrote >

But in the UK it won't be 7-8-9 for another month, today is 8-7-9 <g>
--

That's the date in my world too--but it puts me in a definite minority,
along with putting a comma before "and" in a list of things and making
a
line through the number 7.

Ah, the Oxford comma...
--

Yes. �I have no explanation for why exactly, but at some point during my
four years at geek school, each of these became The Thing We Must Do.
Dawne

I have always crossed my sevens, I was told it was an 'accounting'
thing to do so that 1s were never mistaken for 7s if written hastily.

I think the crossed 7 is a common engineering/science/math/programming
thing. �I also tend to slash 0s, and when writing things will do the little
symbol for a blank space - kind of a small b with a slash thru it. �Plus, I
also slash Zs - which I'm sure is to avoid confusion with 2s.

ellice

OTOH, I checked with my dh, who is a retired naval architect, trained in
England in the days when they spent three months of their apprenticeship
learning how to "letter" things. �He has never, ever, crossed 4s or 7s
or 0s. �He is, however, still a very, very neat printer.

I guess it all depends on where and when you were trained.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

I'd venture to say that your DH is a fair amount older than me. �The number
crossing was more something that came with writing computer code. �For
drafting classes - not - except for some did slashed 0s - electrical code,
symbols, etc. �I'm just old enough to have been the absolute last class at
my uni that had to do the full semester of drafting by hand, not CAD. �And,
indeed, can letter as either an architect, or an engineer - mostly depending
on my mood.

Ellice

Indeed yes. �After all, he IS retired!! �Although he is moderately
computer literate - in the early days, he trotted off to the local
Community College and learned Fortran and one other program - that dates
him, right? - he never aspired to CAD.

Well, it does and it doesn't date him. �FORTRAN has had many, many
incarnations - usually with the year of it's coming into use, as in FORTRAN
77, etc. �Most recent, FORTRAN 2003, with IIRC a revision about to be
accepted for about 2008. �It was really the primary scientific programming
language. � �Depending on what else he did for work there are other
languages. �Most folks learned "BASIC" - besides/before FORTRAN. �Then the
major language used for business programming - think Point of Sales - was
COBOL. �And for the true computer geeks - ASSEMBLER - which is like a
compressed, very dense machine language. �Very difficult to learn/use.
Another well used for science/math language is C, and C++.

Ah...Fortran....I remember it well. I lost out on a job because I
didn't know COBOL but a Fortran course (that I hated because all
the labs were with business applications) and a geology course
got me a job that lasted 25 years.


What the computer really did is let us do amazing quanitities of
calculations in phenomenally shortened time. �Which lets us see graphical
results, predictions, all kinds of things in so much less time than prior
generations. �But, if you don't know what to do with that, or how to be sure
the representation is realistic, possible, etc - it could still be crap. �I
always liked working with the machine shop, and would admit to the guys in
there when I screwed up - as in drawing out some part that couldn't possibly
be machined the way I'd dimensioned, or just wouldn't work. �Many engineers
just won't admit that stuff. �It's definitely a knack to have the knowledge
and intuition to do those back of the envelope solutions, as your DH did.

ellice-
What amazed my DM who worked where I did before she got married
was that we were doing what she did by hand by computer...and in the
25 years I worked what used to take hours and hours, or in some cases
days and days could be done in a few seconds by the time I got out.
And of course when I started there were researchers who had barely
touched a computer...hence my job to translate their geophysical
problems to the computer. Then came the PhDs who actually did
programming in school....sure changed some of my job.

Nancy
.

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