I spent the time scrapping around looking for consulting work, and finally got tired of being the "local girl with no degree," (bad, and let's not pay her much) and went back to Boston where I could be the "wunderkind chief software engineer at DEC with no degree" (wow, and how do we get some of her time?).
I was contracted to teach "Computer Literacy for Restaurant Management Candidates" at New England Culinary Institute. It didn't pay much, but I got partial payment in-kind at their restaurants and I could sit in on seminars and classes. Happily, I got to see enough of the inside of the restaurant business to learn that, although I love to cook, I never wanted to be a chef or run a B&B.
The PC had just come out the previous year, and Visicalc was the first spreadsheet ever. NECI was very anxious to have a computer course in their curriculum.
But chef candidates aren't known for being technology mavens. Hmm... How to get a bunch of these folks to think about computers without threatening them with hot pokers?
I informed them, that first class, that they already knew a programming language. Despite skeptical looks, I sketched things out on the blackboard.
Here is a recipe. It has variables (ingredients), macros/procedures (blend, stir), order of operations including loops (break each egg in and incorporate thoroughly before...), and subroutines (take the caramel sauce [recipe below] and...).
It's divided up into a data section and a program section (ingredients and the how-to bits).
It's divided up into a data section and a program section (ingredients and the how-to bits).
Instead of starting them out on the operating system or spreadsheet use, I went straight from analyzing recipes as a formal language to BASIC.
With their own programs on the computer, I pointed out, they could create a program to convert metric to English measurements, or a converter that used tables of correspondences to convert weight to volume measurement and vice versa. They weren't assignments, just ideas.
By the time we convened the next class, a group of three of the guys came early to class to ask me why they couldn't format the output from their metric/English conversion program to look right. From there, I had them hooked. The rest was gravy, or perhaps bearnaise.
And, every once in a while, when some waitron cops a heavy-duty attitude at me, I cop one back. "I'll have you know, young man, that I used to be an instructor at New England Culinary Institute, and..." No need to tell them I was teaching stuff the snooty kid waiter probably learned in grade school, these days!
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