Re: Computer architects leaving Intel...

On 17/09/2024 08:43, Terje Mathisen wrote:

Stephen Fuld wrote:

On 9/16/2024 4:12 AM, David Brown wrote:
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With all respect to the regulars here, most people in technical Usenet groups are either old, unusually nerdy, or both.

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I resemble that remark!  :-)

 Ditto, probably...
 

Of course my comment was not meant very seriously, though there is a lot of truth in it.  Most regulars in technical Usenet groups have been in those groups for a long time - very few twenty year olds can hold a conversation about Fortran and S390 mainframes!  And most of us are fairly nerdy - this stuff is not just a job, it's also an interest.  But that does not mean any of us are /too/ old, or have only nerdy interests.

I'm 67 (but not yet retired), I taught myself the Trachtenberg algorithms for mental arithmetic when I was around 12 (was reminded of this last night when I watched Gifted on netflix), I mail ordered what was probably the first Rubik's cube to get to Norway. (And developed three different algorithms to solve it, but I only remember the last one now which I had optimized for simplicity, not speed.)
 

I would have been about 9 or 10 when I got my first Rubik's cube.  A mathematician colleague of my father's and I put together a solution algorithm based on a few bits he had remembered from a lecture by David Singmaster.  When the rest of the class played football at break, I stood in the goals practising the Rubiks's cube - I believe that counts as nerdy!

Those, along with high school chess and orienteering mapping should count as nerdy pursuits, right?
 

Orienteering is too physical to be nerdy, isn't it?  I teach judo to kids - so none of us are perfect :-)

Winning the County Yo-Yo championship would be less so?

It is still a /bit/ nerdy...

 Regards to all the regulars here, I do consider many of you friends that I just haven't met yet.
 

That is a fine attitude.  I like to think that even with the people I regularly disagree with in technical groups, if we were to sit down with a coffee or a beer, rather than a screen and keyboard, we'd have a very pleasant evening.