Science Quote by W. Richard Stevens

The line lands with the offhand modesty of someone for whom a life-defining pivot is treated like a clerical update. “After graduating in 1973 I went into the programming field” is almost aggressively unadorned: no triumph, no calling, no manifesto. That restraint is the point. It frames programming not as romance or rebellion, but as work - a pragmatic decision made in a specific historical window when “the programming field” was solidifying into an identity you could plausibly enter, not just a task you happened to do.

The date does heavy lifting. 1973 sits at the hinge between the era of room-sized institutional computing and the coming personal-computing explosion. C (1972), Unix’s early spread, ARPANET’s growth, and the slow professionalization of software were all in the air. To say “went into” suggests a frontier turning into a sector: a space with employers, norms, and a career ladder. The phrasing captures that transitional moment, when computing stopped being an adjunct to engineering or math and became its own vocational lane.

Calling it “the programming field” also signals a scientist’s lens: programming as an applied domain rather than pure theory, a toolset you join to solve problems. The subtext is generational and cultural: a cohort of technically trained graduates who didn’t just learn to code - they moved toward where power and possibility were concentrating. The sentence’s plainness is its credibility. It reads like lab notes, not self-mythology, which is exactly how many foundational tech careers were actually lived.