Headline Oct. 16/ ''' GIRLS OF CODE '''

''' GIRLS OF CODE '''

FROM PROUD PAKISTAN   -even on global basis, few if any could match both of them in coding  :  Rabo & Shazaib Khan Yusafzai are of highest class.

But then Shahzaib and Rabo also have very few equals in humaness, in sacrificing, in helping and ultimately leading. 

If mentored on Abstraction and Orientation, they could both, most easily, rise to highest levels of inventions. *All Apps are nothing but one topsy turvy algorithms stitched together*.

Up the learning curve, Rabo and Shazaib both, are  also very  near the insight, that in programing, if no easy solution stirs, *add another level of complexity*. Rabo? Shahzaib?  

Haleema, is another master coder, with a focus that will do a laser proud. While Merium, Saima, Sarah, Dee, swum around as of unique artistic meanders. 

And of these great lads and heroes, Engineer Hussain, stays a gifted mathematical thinker, Phd and beyond. Marwin/Germany on Neuro work, Mustafa in research, Ali Ezzaz on the beauty of media- journalism.    

One more rising star, you will soon be hearing more about is the genius of  Engineer & Technologist Robotics : Umair Nasir : City School/Kings College, UK. 

Having said all that, allow me now, to return to the work and world of earthlings and passions and pains and accomplishments............

''I FEAR FOR THE WORLD THE INTERNET is creating,'' .......  she wrote. These days she is still concerned about the damage the Internet is doing to culture, privacy and civility.

AS MILESTONE years go, 1997 was a pretty good one. The computers may have been mostly beige and balky, but certain developments were destined to pay off the road.

Steve Jobs returned to the floundering Apple after a year of corporate exile, IBM's Deep Blue  computer finally nailed the world-championship chess master  Garry Kasparov with a checkmate-

And a couple of Stanford Students registered the domain name for a new website called google.com.

Nineteen ninety-seven also happened to be the year that the software engineer  Ellen Ullman  published :

''Close to the Machine : Technophilia and and its Discontents,'' her first book about working as a programmer in a massively male-dominated field.

That slender volume became a classic of 20th century digital culture literature and was critically praised for its sharp look at the industry, presented in a literary voice that ignored the biz-whiz  braggadocio of the early dot-com era.

The book had obvious appeal to technically inclined women -desktop support people like myself then, computer-science majors, admirers of Donna J. Haraway's feminist cyborg manifesto-

Those finding work in the newish world of website building -and served as a reminder that someone had already been through it all and took notes for the future. 

Then Ullman retired as a programmer,  logging out to go write two intense character-driven thriller novels and the occasional nonfiction essay.

The digital economy bounced back after the Epic Fail of 2000, and two decades later, those techno-seeds planted back in 1997 have finally bloomed.

Just look at all those smartphones, constantly buzzing with news alerts and calendar notifications as we tell the virtual assistant to find us Google Maps directions to the new rice-bowl place.

What would Ullman think of all this? We can now find out as she's written a new book, ''Life in Code : A Personal History of Technology,'' which manages to feel like both a prequel and sequel  to her first book.

Don't panic, non-nerds. In addition to writing code in multiple computer languages, Ullman  has an  Ivy degree in English and knows how to decode her tech-world adventures into narratives for word people :

''Time went on ; I graduated from Cornell and moved to San Francisco, where one day in 1979,  I walked past a Radio Shack store on Market Street and saw in the window a microcomputer called  TRS-80. Reader, I bought it.''

Her work as an active programmer spanned about 20 years, ending in the 1990s,  but some experiences stay with you forever.

''The role they assigned to me, translator, is perhaps the most accurate description of everything I have ever done concerning technology,'' she writes of one gig.

As I've found in my own scribbling about tech, language skills and accurate translation are essential to understanding in both human and computer systems.

The first three-fifths of  '' Life in Code '' is primarily composed of essays published elsewhere between 1994 and 2004. while newer material from 2012 to early 2017 fills out the rest.

The technology mentioned within those early chapters often recalls quaint discovery, like finding a chunky, clunky drawer.

The piece on preparing computers for the Year 2000 has a musty-time capsule feel, but the philosophical questions posed in other chapters -like those on  Robotics and Artificial Intelligence   -still resonate.

While the electrified economy had yet to compete its first dramatic cycle of boom and bust when her first book came out, a 1998 essay in  ''Life in Code'' shows  Ullman, Cassandra-like and ever the pragmatic pessimist-

Already bracing for the coming storm ''I fear for the world the Internet is creating,'' she wrote.

''Before the advent of the Web, if you wanted to sustain a belief in far-fetched ideas, you had-

To go out in the desert, or live in a compound in the mountains, or move from one badly furnished room to another in a series of safe houses.''

''These days she is still concerned about the damage the Internet is doing to culture, privacy and civility.     

What hasn't changed in the past 20 years is the dominant demographic of the technology industry and its overall lack of diversity.

The Honour and Serving of the latest ''Operational Research'' on the Genius and Accomplishments of  Students Ecosystem continues.

With respectful dedication to All The Great Coders of the World, Students, Professors and Teachers. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW!  -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' The Stars : The Shine '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless