Good Computer Scientists can observe a variety of different problems and structure them so that they are particular instances of a more general problem. They can get a good all-round view and at the same time take total control of the fine detail. They can switch rapidly between the consideration of overall structure and the individual elements. Judy was good at that. Even if you get the structure right, you have still to make sure that the minutest detail is precisely handled. Judy had a ready grasp of how to generalise solutions to what on first appearance look like different problems. She took untold pains over the fiddly bits, and it all worked like clockwork. It was neat on the inside, and felt entirely natural on the outside. That is not easy to achieve.
Parallel to her ability to design a great engine, she could document it clearly. She wrote very laboriously, but with great precision. It is often true that when you write down how you have solved a problem, you can see even better ways of tackling it. That happened. You are supposed to document what you are going to do before you do it, but this was the 1970’s.
Judy produced an internal document for her own department, “The simplified plotting routines“. The Computer Centre staff realised that this was of general use, and decided to offer the software as a formal service to all departments in the University. David issued a Computer Centre official document which incorporated her internal report. The work was obviously valuable to any University which provided computing facilities to Scientists and Engineers. Every separate University had a different central Computer. She set about continuing to generalise her software to work, with minimal adaptation, on different computers to which were attached different graphics devices. The software was given free of charge to anyone who asked for it.
All this was in her spare time, as she had plenty of work to do in her own department. She maintained her general regular advisory service, and helped individual lecturers in their software development. The project to analyse the way that weather conditions affected different types of radio signals was developing well, and she produced unique solutions to display the data. One of them was particularly good which enabled you to display a contour map of one variable over a region, and then a contour map of another variable over the same region, and then to interlace them so that you could see their relationship to each other. This was never written up. The Department bought new graphics equipment, and Judy could adapt her software to make full use of it. Everyone was happy. David meanwhile was fully engaged in research of his own in automatically creating diagnostic tests for computers. And he became an Assistant Cub Scout Leader. And Phil was now about 10 years old. And they created a decent home life. Maybe. You will have to ask Phil.
Without intending to, Judy had designed and built a Product. A large manufacturing firm in the South of England, Hunting Engineering, advertised a post for someone to write the software that she had already developed. She wrote to them saying that she did not want the job, but that she already had a solution to their problem. They wrote back, saying “What does it cost?“. Well, it did not cost anything, but before she sent that reply she talked to the man who negotiated contracts for the University with Industry. He was a business man. He arranged for the Hunting Engineering Project Manager to visit the University. There ensued a conversation which amused Judy no end.
“What does it cost?”
“We normally charge £1,500”
That was a year’s salary in those days. It may have been an uncharacteristic character flaw, as she could never lie, but she did not laugh or protest. He was being silly. She was now in a world she had never visited before. The businessmen to’d and fro’d, and they came up with a contract that limited the University’s responsibility, but which gave Hunting Engineering the solution they wanted. They settled for £500.00. The money was split 4 ways between the University, the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the Computer Centre, and Judy. She didn’t want any money, but the number of the Deadly Sins is 7. She was completely unaffected by Avarice to the end of her days, but Pride could sneak in when she wasn’t looking.
£500 was still a lot of money – 4 months salary. Months later, when the money did eventually arrive, Judy didn’t know what to do with it, and it just went into a Savings Account.
The University Industrial Liaison Manager smelt a winner. This was a new world for him, and he explored it with interest. It was possible to buy a magnetic tape for, say, £10.00, write a lot of 1’s and 0’s on it, and sell it for £500.00. Over and over again. There was some work to do, recording on to the tape, and sending it in the post, but there was a lot of clear profit here. And Judy had all the 1’s and 0’s you could hope for. The Simplified Plotting Routines became Simpleplot and Judy’s Department issued SIMPLEPLOT User’s Handbook. Report No. 253. It was, of course well written, and the University had a money making venture on its hands.
David also enjoyed writing, but his style was journalistic. He wrote several short items for the UK computer press, and a fuller article over several pages for which he was amazed that he was paid. Money was coming in to the University, all the Product components were in place, everyone was getting something for their effort, and morale was high. Industrial Companies made enquiries about buying rights in the software, but Judy did not want to lose the complete freedom she was enjoying. She valued the work rather than the money. She was told that if she wrote up a description of the design principles behind her software, it could count as a thesis for a degree. The Professor of Computing was appointed as her supervisor. Not a good choice, as she had no regard for him, and regularly fell out with him in University Computer Users’ meetings, but he was content to let her do things her own way.
She wrote the thesis and was pleased with its structure and with the design of her software. Her supervisor drove her to her final examination with the Professor of Computing at the University of Leeds. During this examination, her supervisor said it would be better if she explained in greater detail the mathematics behind some of the algorithms she had developed. She told him that was not necessary as the mathematics was entirely straightforward. She was not writing an elementary school book, and would not change her thesis by one sentence. The Leeds professor calmed the atmosphere with great aplomb. He obviously had followed her argument, and he managed to quieten things down.
About 4 years before her death when she was losing her mathematical ability, she referred back to her thesis, read it from beginning to end, and said “I couldn’t have written it better myself“.
Oooh she could be difficult.
But now at last she was a qualified success. She was a Master (without being a chap) of Philosophy (without having much idea about Philosophy).
Then she and David wrote a joint article which was published as a Special Feature in Computer, a prestigious US publication. This was a problem
jbrip 