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From: rance@cornell.UUCP (W. Rance Cleaveland)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: What Do You Do?
Message-ID: <3133@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 14-Jul-85 13:52:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: cornell.3133
Posted: Sun Jul 14 13:52:20 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Jul-85 03:13:27 EDT
References: <1030@trwatf.UUCP> <33100024@ISM780.UUCP>
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept.
Lines: 31

> 
> Dear Net Landers:
> 
> At my job I work on C compilers, for a software company
> that specializes in doing Unix ports.  When I meet people socially, a
> frequently asked question is "What do you do for a living?"  How can I
> answer without being boorish or boring? 

I have this problem too, and I expect that anyone in a technical field will
as well.  I can't very well tell my grandparents, or my SO's mother, that I'm
investigating the possibilities of using constructive logics to aid in the
reasoning about, and construction of, distributed systems.  After stumbling
and muttering on several occasions, I decided that a Strategy was in order.
Here is what it is:
1.  Use no terminology specific to your discipline.
2.  Use analogies to subjects the listener understands.
3.  Generalize away most technical details.

Now, when Aunt Shirley asks me what I do, I say something like, "I'm working
at developing a mathematical framework for analyzing whether certain types of
computers behave the way you want them to."  If she asks what kind of computers,
I say, "Computer systems in which several computers communicate with each other
to solve problems.  Sometimes, just as two heads are better than one, two com-
puters are better than one."  Then I ask her about how she likes Savannah....

In your case, you could say something like, "I write programs which translate
from a computer langauge which one computer cannot understand to one which it
can understand."  The translation analogy would work pretty well, I think....

Regards,
Rance Cleaveland