Writing my introductory post led me to think of some of the many people who have taught me important lessons. One of those people was Duc Tran, an engineer I knew when I was a technician at Rixon. He taught me a technique for using an index register to keep track of current state, instead of relying on a flock of boolean values and “if” statements. That revelation changed the path of my life, and led me to seeking simpler, yet more powerful, constructs. I was caught in a lay-off (my first of many) not many months later, and I’ve lost track of Duc Tran. I doubt that he’s aware of the influence he had.

It’s perhaps a characteristic of the human condition that we are often unaware of the good we do in the world. We must keep trying in spite of the lack of feedback.