I am new here so please bear with me, it has taken me years to get here and remembering my first year in code takes some remembering. I was introduced to coding by Wendy who played in a piano club at night and was a high level coder (a term you do not hear much anymore) during the day.

We worked with the Compiler Monitor System (CMS2Y) "CMS-2 was developed for FCPCPAC (Fleet Computer Programming Center - Pacific) in San Diego, CA. It was implemented by Computer Sciences Corporation in 1968 with design assistance from Intermetrics. The language continued to be developed, eventually supporting a number of computers including the AN/UYK-7 and AN/UYK-43." (1) The AN/UYK-7 computer was the first standardized computer that was designed for use on Navy Submarines and was used in three principal systems one of which was the boats sonar system and since I was a Submarine Sonarman I encountered it when I was transferred to shore duty after 7 years at sea to be an instructor at the now defunct Naval Pacific Submarine Training Center - Detachment at Ballast Point on Point Loma in San Diego also referred to as The Submarine Base.

I am getting their! bare with me please. My job at the training center was to lead a team of instructors teaching underwater sound and signal analysis as it pertained to classifying Acoustic targets and part of my job was to help program the tactical training System signal generator so the targets presented to the sonar team during tactical training were acoustically identical and signal identical to the target that they would encounter at sea.

Thus my entry into the realm of 32bit programming sheets and 4 Format octal words and key punching and card readers and, and, and... ya me too, are you still with me?

My first professional job programming was with Assembly programming for embedded Motorola 68XXX family of processors doing 32 bit fft's in another submarine acoustic receiver, I went on to Pascal and 'c' programing a torpedo run simulator. I did all this as a EG&G employee at the IBM facility in Manasseh, VA. When this job ran down I was sent to Dahlgren, VA to be the chief programmer for a DBIII/Foxpro program that was used to manage all aegis equipment held on shore about 2,000,000 lines of code. Then a box of Oracle 6 for Dos 4.1 on a 286 computer (IBM) was dropped on my desk and here i am today.

Thank you for sticking around for 50 years of my first week in the programming industry as I have watch the methods and languages change over the years. Next time; about the Textronics 4051/4056 desktop calculator that we turned into a submarine towed array.

Frederick (rick) Mayes

1. Wikipedia contributors. CMS-2 (programming language). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. July 31, 2017, 09:32 UTC. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CMS-2_(programming_language)&oldid=793208018. Accessed September 20, 2019.