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Re: Where did you get your feet wet?

Subject: Re: Where did you get your feet wet?
From: "Guy K. Haas" <guy -at- hiskeyboard -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2005 01:14:56 -0700


After getting a B.S. in Math and one in Physical Science/Chemistry, I started out as a FORTRAN applications programmer in aerospace and then moved over into software engineering as a compiler developer for a computer manufacturer (Burroughs). That involved me in ANSI programming language standards work on BASIC.

I moved to another company (Datapoint) and got involved with a COBOL compiler, and then moved again to another company (Tandem) to join their COBOL compiler team. As I looked at the documentation for that COBOL, I kept finding ...infelicities in what they said or the way that they said it, and kept sending comments to the doc team.

About the time I was getting sick of the compiler job, the doc team basically said, "OK, smartass -- if you have so many opinions about our doc, why not come over to our side and make the doc better?" So I did.

Now I write for the programmer audience (reference material, APIs, SDKs, and the like).

--Guy K. Haas
Software Exegete in Silicon Valley

Lori Olcott wrote:

Hi Y'all -

Several of these threads have gotten me wondering how most of us got
involved in tech writing to begin with. How many of you have your
bachelors or masters in the field? How many of you grew into it from
previous jobs? How many of you just thought it sounded interesting and
jumped on in?


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References:
Where did you get your feet wet?: From: Lori Olcott

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