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Dan McCracken Pull Quotes
Dan McCracken is a full professor of Computer Science and former president of the ACM. Dan is widely respected for his early books on FORTRAN programming. Many senior computer scientists will fondly tell you that they "learned FORTRAN from McCracken." He recently published a text on user centered website development. McCracken holds degrees in mathematics, chemistry and a master's of divinity. His over 55 years of experience in the computing field includes the last 35 in academia.
This webpage gives excerpts taken from the interview of Dan McCracken conducted on the 17th of June 2006 in New York City by Alison Young. The entire interview and transcript are also available from here.
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Dan McCracken's Own Bio
City College, City University of New York
ACM Fellow 13 mb interview opens in new window pdf interview transcript opens in new window |
"I'm the one that pushes for curriculum revision and I'm constantly learning new stuff, just because I like to and because I think it's in the best interests of the students. Changes never happen fast enough for the pusher who wants the change and I get pretty impatient in that kind of situation and I'm sure I'm not the most diplomatic person in the world. So that's led to some frustration." (48:16-49:03)Link to this audio snippet in new window "I read an article in Time magazine about whatever the latest machine at Harvard was, Mark IV maybe, not sure about that, and it described what was being done with it: differential equations and all that kind of stuff and I remember that moment and I said "that's what I want to do, that is interesting stuff." (12:21-12:41)Link to this audio snippet in new window "[I was w]orking for Herb Grosch, [at General Electric in] Cincinnati; working on 704. He'd asked me to teach a course for new employees coming in. [T]wo editors from Wiley who were really on the ball...were looking for somebody to write a programming book, about which, there weren't any at the time, no textbooks. They went to Herb, who was extremely well known at that point, and said' why don't you write a book on programming?' He said, 'nah, not me, but I've got this kid working for me ought to write a book...' They said fine, when can we meet him? And one thing led to another and that was my first book a couple of years later. And I wrote that on GE time. Honeywell said, 'well why don't you write us a FORTRAN manual?'" "That first FORTRAN book sold about 300,000 copies, which was a stunning number. I think still would be, certainly was at the time. Mind you it sold for $2.95. The royalties were great and a typical textbook at the time was probably around $10. So $2.95 for my book; has a quaint sound now." "I joined ACM in 1954. I might have the oldest member-since date in the organization. For everybody who knows I was ACM President, there are 500 that know I wrote the FORTRAN book." "A student came up to me, came back to visit the campus about a year after she graduated. She wanted to say thank you. I appreciated that. What she said thank you for, she said you taught us how to teach ourselves. And I'm very proud of that." |
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