College and Early Career 1984-1993

I started my studies at the Pennsylvania State University in 1984. Unsure of what to major in, I remembered what Mr Zimmerman said in 8th grade and decided to study Computer Science. While there were some other women majoring in Computer Science, the vast majority were men. In retrospect (and at the risk of generalizing) my sense is that I was different than my male colleagues: whereas they tended to get very excited by new computer stores on campus and the latest hardware and processors, my passion was being a creator. Just give me the computer and a programming language, and I love to design and build fun and useful applications. 

Punched Cards

 The years I was at Penn State were an interesting time in the history of computing. When I was a freshman, I could see the seniors in the computer center still submitting their work using stacks of punched cards, although use of this media was phased out during my years as an undergraduate. 

While there was nothing like the Internet and I had never heard the words “World Wide Web”, I do remember some things that hinted at what was to come. I was able to send instant messages from my terminal to my friends’ terminals within Penn State. And I do recall figuring out how to creatively send email messages to a friend at another university by poking around and figuring out how to route the message using something called “Darpanet”. But that is the extent of messaging that I remember. 

 

Before cats went viral on the social media of today, we had Ascii Art Cats

Students who were doing creative and edgy things were those who created and sent “Happy Holiday” type messages using carefully cobbled together ascii keyboard characters, instant messages scrolling across our terminals (the precursor of character-based smilies we all know and love today).     

My curriculum was very different than the Computer Science curriculum of today. Since these were pre-Internet times, computer security was not emphasized as it is now. Instead, we were taught to creatively design algorithms to minimize programs’ running time and amount of storage used, given the high cost of computer memory and nonexistence of processors with speeds we are used to today. 

Some of my projects included developing my own operating system, building my own database system from scratch and writing my own compiler. For most of my projects I used the Pascal language or PDP-11 Assembler language .  However, this was a time where many new languages were being introduced and evolving, and it was unclear which would become prominent. In a programming language class, I recall being assigned projects in each of these languages: Machine Code (all 0’s and 1’s!), ALGOL, SNOBOL, Lisp, Prolog, and ADA. 

I am not sure whether the term “IT” (Information Technology) had been coined yet; however, I do remember learning about a new major being introduced called “MIS” (Management Information Systems) which was different from our Computer Science program. I suspect that this was what would evolve into IT as we know it today. 

I graduated from Penn State in 1988 and accepted a job as a Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Communications Research (Bellcore).  Bellcore and Bell Labs, in those days, were known to be great places to work in tech. This was in fact the case with my position. Part of my job requirement was to attain a Master's Degree in Computer Science. I did this while working part-time and studying part-time. In 1990 I was awarded my Master's Degree from Stevens Institute of Technology. 

My roles at Bellcore included Systems Test and System Development. Languages I worked with included Pascal, Assembler and a popular language of the time which was new to me: C.  

After my first year at Bellcore, the company announced impending cost cutting measures and workforce reductions. While my job was not in immediate jeopardy, the environment shifted to a less secure and more cutthroat political workplace. Being as young as I was and inexperienced in navigating corporate politics, I struggled to remain afloat and stay positive.

During my time at Bellcore, I met my first in a series of amazing women who became my mentors and who helped me navigate my career. Sophie Shor was a computer consultant at Bellcore, 18 years my senior, and an immigrant from Russia. We became fast friends (and remain the closest of friends to this day). Sophie and I cultivated a win-win work relationship: I helped her with her English, written and spoken, and she helped me navigate the pervasive corporate politics. 

Sophie at Bellcore circa 1990

At the time, Sophie and her husband Roman were in the planning stages of opening their first jewelry store (the resulting store, Roman Jewelers, was to become a very successful business, and is still in business today). 

After researching what software was available for management of retail jewelry stores, and having acute insight into my personality, Sophie had a proposition for me: “Alyssa”, she said. “I know you, and I know the politics in this place will not allow you to thrive and reach your potential. You need your own business. I’ll tell you what: if you can build some software to work for jewelers, I will teach you all about how the jewelry industry works. It will be win-win". 

 I decided to take Sophie up on her offer. I began working on jewelry software (later to be known as “Clarity”) as a side project. I started with using Microsoft DOS (Disk Operating System, Microsoft’s original command-based operating system) with dBase, one of the first database management systems for microcomputers and the most successful in its day.   At that time, Microsoft Windows was an operating system that we were vaguely aware of, although I don’t think I knew anyone actively using Windows. 

Jon & I circa 1990. Kids!

Also, around this time, I met my soon-to-be husband, Jon, who was an engineer at AT&T/Bell Labs. Jon also became an active participant in the Clarity project. Jon’s curious nature and “anything is possible” attitude helped train my thinking when building Clarity. He would never let me get away with saying “we can’t do that with the available technology” but would instead figure out all sorts of creative ways to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish. It was fun, albeit maddening at times, working with Jon through the years.

 After working on our project for a few months, we came upon a press release from Microsoft in a magazine. Microsoft was getting ready to roll out a product called “Microsoft Access” which would be a relational database system for Windows, complete with a full development environment using the Access Basic programming language. We sensed that Windows was the future so at this point we did a complete pivot, abandoning the dBase project and starting from scratch using Windows + MS Access. I spent the next few years spending whatever available time I could find outside my full-time job working on Clarity. After several years, we decided to take the leap and I left my job to pursue Clarity full time.

Some of our original Microsoft Access Disks and Documentation

Please continue reading the next chapter of my blog: Artisan Computer 1994-2015