I'd have invested in Apple sooner than I did.

 

I would tell myself thirty years younger:

In two years you will design and code a complex computer project. It will work well and impress others in your department, but it will not sell. In your offices there is a manual for sales people. It describes companies that create the same kind of software as your department. Find it, and take notes on the companies. When your project passes alpha testing, send your resume to each of those companies. The pretty Chinese lady you you are dating and just introduced to your parents is not going to marry you. She is no reason to stay in the area if you get a job in another state.

If you do not get a better job with another company, your boss, who everyone likes and respects, will. He will be replaced by a petty tyrant, who knows nothing about computer technology, and who owes his position to office politics. Try to hide your contempt for him. The single most important factor in a job is a good relationship with your boss, even if he is an incompetent bully.

I guess I could say that in five minutes. It took me less time to write it. Maybe I would write it down, give it to my younger self, and say, "Read it several times until you can recite it from memory."

 

I would tell your younger self, get out of the software business.

 

Computer technology changes quickly. The way to get places is to learn the next new thing when it is being introduced and start looking for a job when employers are looking for people who know it, but they cannot demand three years of experience, because it did not exist three years ago. The hard part is figuring out what the next new thing is. If you learn a new technology that becomes obsolete your skills will probably not be transferable.

Because I am a frustrated writer, I love to code original computer programs using the COBOL language. COBOL is similar to written English. Four

COBOL commands could be:

IF LINE-COUNTER IS GREATER THAN 30
MOVE ZEROS TO LINE-COUNTER
ADD 1 TO PAGE-COUNTER
MOVE PAGE-COUNTER TO PAGE-OUT
PERFORM 220-PRINT PAGE.

Without knowing anything about computer language one can understand what is happening there. I like to code computer programs that do not only do what they are supposed to do, but that are easy for another programmer to understand, and that look pretty.

Unfortunately, COBOL has been phased out. I do not quite understand why. I think COBOL is excellent for accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, and interactive voice response programming. There is still a lot of COBOL code to maintain. Most if it is poorly coded, poorly documented, and unpleasant to work with.

I took two courses in C++, and liked it, but I never used it professionally.

 

I did not like working with software, but I loved the hardware part. Building them, printed circuit boards, components, that's what spun my fancy.
It was two very different fields that had to come together to make the computers work. Heh, software guys that we employed were some weird dudes.

But you have to be able to adjust to new technology, especially in the computer business. It changed rapidly, and still is.

 

Does this copier make my ass look fat?

 

Shooters two younger brothers got into computers (Thank you Uncle Harold). The youngest went into programming. The elder went into hardware. The elder once explained to the younger that software that could interpret and respond to inputs, you know, to do predictive programming, would be HUGE just as soon as the hardware to handle such a program caught up. The younger pooh poohed the elder.

If only they had listened to eachother.

 

I'd tell myself to buy a new electronic guitar tuner before the band went to Hawaii - and/or not to let the bass player use it.

Oh, and to buy 200,000 bitcoins for $16k back when they first went on sale at EIGHT CENTS EACH, and to sell the lot in December 2017 when they hit $19,783 each.

Almost 4 billion in profit.

 

I would tell myself of certain people I should avoid and not get involved with!

 

I'm not sure what I'd tell my younger self. I think.

 

Mini vans cannot fly always remember liquor first don't drink bong water it's funny but everyone else is going to puke save yourself a lot of trouble you're gonna meet this redhead at a party do not give her a ride home oh and be nice

 

Women are: men do. A woman as beautiful as you are is unlikely to make serious mistakes in her life.

 

There are a lot of other things I would tell myself:

1) The woman you marry will go from the love of your life to a fucking nightmare ON THE HONEYMOON!
2) Treat your right knee better - it won't last forever.
3) Don't bother watching the first season of FlashForward - as awesome as it was, it will be canceled and leave you hanging.
4) Me, your future self, is not necessarily smarter than you - it's just that I've 'been there, done that'.
Oh, and
5) Hang on for six more months to sell your house for the divorce - it'll be worth $60k to a $100k more.

 

It is difficult to predict the economic future. Many people who think they predicted the future only guessed right. In 1980 a personal computer was not much more than a rich man's toy. The IBM personal computer used MS Dos. The MS stands for Microsoft. Back then if you had a PC you could learn Pascal and Basic. They were rarely used in business programming. COBOL was the business programming language of choice. However, COBOL used a compiler that was too large for a personal computer. The internet had begun in 1969, but there was little on it. In 1980 MS Dos did not even give access to what little of the internet existed.

I began my computer studies in 1982. My introduction to computers text book speculated about the future of computers. It did not mention personal computers, Microsoft, or the internet.

In 1980 you could do work processing with a PC using MS Dos. A PC, a letter quality printer, and the software for word processing cost about $10,000. For $700 you could get a word processing machine that did nothing but word processing.

After 1982 the C programming language was becoming popular with employers. You could learn C with an IBM PC and MS Dos. However, it you got a job using C, it would run in a UNIX environment. UNIX did not run on a PC.

 

I was pretty shy, so I'd tell myself not to be shy I guess, even though it's useless. But then I got some hot girls at school because I was shy, girls that my better looking and more extraverted friends weren't getting. But I was also too shy to go any further than kissing. But they were so fucking jealous and I secretely liked it. But their cocks were also bigger than mine. And they ended up having a wife and kids, where I was left alone, yet free and with all of my money to spend on a house, whores and Belgian beer. I'm not sure who won, but I'm pretty sure GD is fucking me up, so I'm out of here motherfuckers.

 

Your property is NOT Gaining Value ! The Dollar is getting more worthless at an equal or higher pace!

 

I'd say. Giver her that extra hug and kiss while you can.

 

I would tell myself which stocks I should invest in for future profits.

 

Be more like45 years and an hour

 

I would tell my self to buy stocks of all today's biggest company's be four they hit big