Stanford eCorner Finding the Great Problems [Entire Talk] Barbara Liskov, MIT CSAIL (Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab) 22-10-2019 URL: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/?post_type=video&p=64208 Barbara Liskov was already breaking new ground in 1968, when she became one of the first American women to earn a doctorate in the emerging discipline of computer science. After receiving that PhD at Stanford, she went on to design several influential programming languages, including CLU, an important precursor to Java. More recently, as an Institute Professor at MIT and head of the institute’s Programming Methodology Group, she has undertaken crucial research on distributed systems, information security and complex system failure issues. She is one of fewer than 100 individuals to receive an A.M. Turing Award from the Association of Computing Machinery. In a conversation with host Ann Miura-Ko, a lecturer in Stanford’s Department of Management Science and Engineering and founding partner of the venture capital firm Floodgate, Liskov explores how she discovered the nascent field of computer science, how she recognized and surmounted a number of fundamental computing challenges, and shares her concerns and hopes about how computing will continue to transform our lives. Transcript (calm electronic music) - [Presenter] Who you are defines how you build.. (applause) - We have a lot of young people here today and I was fascinated by the fact that you grew up in the Bay Area, you grew up in San Francisco.. Went to UC Berkeley, went away for a little bit.. Came back to Stanford, so we'd love to hear a little bit of the origin story.. - Okay, well as you said, I grew up right in San Francisco.. It's a very different place now then it was then.. And I was always interested in math and science.. Even though at that time, even more so then today, it was not considered the thing that women should be doing.. But I persevered, and I went to Berkeley, and I majored in math.. - Were there early influences that pushed you on that path? - You know, I don't think so.. I think that my parents, my mother was a housewife, my father was a lawyer.. They had no particular reason to push me toward engineering and so forth.. But they were certainly encouraging.. Whatever I wanted to do was fine with them, which I think is really important for young people.. So I went off to Berkeley, I majored in math.. And when I finished there I thought about going to graduate school, but I decided I really wasn't ready because I didn't wanna make that kind of commitment to studying.. And so I decided to get a job.. And I had a close friend who had graduated from Stanford, and we decided to move to the Boston area because my father grew up here.. And I came to Boston, and I went to look for a job.. And I couldn't find a good job as a mathematician.. Which is not surprising, since you really need more than an undergraduate degree in math to do interesting math.. But I was offered a job as a programmer.. And at this point I didn't even know computers existed.. I had never heard of a computer.. And they were hiring people like me who knew nothing about computers, because there was no computer science department.. There was nobody graduating from college who knew how to program.. So they would hire anybody that they thought might be able to do the job.. And I went to work at a place called the Mitre Corporation.. And my first day on the job I was handed a Fortran manual and I was asked to write a program to do some little thing that they described to me.. I've forgotten what it was.. And I discovered this field that I knew nothing about.. That was really interesting and really fit my abilities.. And so I was off to the races, and that's how I discovered computer science.. I worked at Mitre for a year and then I switched and worked at Harvard for a year.. At Harvard, I worked on a machine translation project.. And I was actually maintaining a big program.. In those days you used to have printouts, and that printout was two or three inches thick.. And my job was to maintain that code.. And it was written in machine language.. So one of the two benefits of that job, I learned how the machine works, so I learned about computer architecture.. And I also learned about what it means to write good and bad code, because when you're maintaining somebody else's code, you certainly see both the good points and the bad points.. Anyway part way through that period, and working at this job, I decided to go to graduate school.. Because I felt that although I was learning a lot, I was basically self-taught.. And it seemed like I could make a lot more progress going to school.. And I decided to go back to Stanford because I felt it was time to come back to California.. So that's sort of how I got into the field.. - And when did you come back to Palo Alto then? - I came here in 1963, so I worked for two years and then I went back to graduate school.. - A lot of undergraduate students are thinking about this, in this moment right now, of do I go straight into graduate school, or do I take a moment to go out and work for a little bit, and then come back.. It sounds like this process of actually getting out and working for a little bit, was very influential in what you decided to study.. Can you talk a little bit more about that? - I think it was obviously crucial for me.. If I had gone on, the way I was going when I finished my bachelors degree.. I probably would never have ended up where I ended up.. I think that in a way, what happened, because I went and looked for a job, is that a door opened, that I hadn't expected to see.. And actually, I think these kinds of moments happen in many people's careers.. You think you're on a certain path, you discover along the way, some opportunity presents itself, and you move in a different direction.. It just changes the way your life is.. As far as the question of, should you go on for a graduate degree, right away, or is it okay to go and work instead.. I always tell my students, that it's a personal decision.. What you're looking for in a career, is something that you're good at, and something that you like.. Because if you don't have both of those things, you're not gonna be successful.. But exactly what that's gonna be for you, depends on you, and you have to find a path and figure it out for yourself.. And so there isn't a right or a wrong answer here.. It's just, you sort of follow your nose and things will happen.. - I love that.. So you arrived here in Palo Alto in 1963, for many of you in the room, you all know that this is, Palo Alto is ground zero for many very well known startups.. In 1965, there was a very well known startup, that started in Palo Alto, called the Grateful Dead.. On High Street, and so that's the period you're coming here to Stanford.. So I would love to know what was Stanford like in that period, and then what was the computer science department like.. - So Stanford was a backwater.. I had been going to Berkeley, Berkeley is so full of energy, there's so much going on there.. - Still is.. - And I went to Stanford and it just felt like I was in the middle of nowhere.. And you have to understand that it was much less developed then it is now.. There were still apricot orchards in this area.. So it was a different time.. - But they had the Grateful Dead.. - They did have the Grateful Dead.. And the whole business of startups wasn't really around, not the way we know it today.. HP existed, so there were some more electrical engineering things.. SRI existed I think, but there wasn't a hell of a lot going on.. But as far as a place to study was concerned, it was good.. There wasn't even a computer science department yet, when I got here, it was just a program.. It was very small.. I don't actually remember how many people were in my entering class, but it was probably five, or something like that, really small.. Nevertheless, the classes that I took had quite a few people attending them.. And I remember fondly, the class I took on compilers, in which the class took over the machine room in the evening, because it was the only way where we could get our turnaround in time.. Since that was the day of batch processing.. Otherwise you would submit a deck, and two days later you might get back the answer about whether there was a bug in your program.. - And you were the first woman to get a PhD in computer science from Stanford.. - Yes.. - Were there challenges there, or did it feel different, or were you used to being a woman, a pioneering woman in your field, by this-- - (laughs) Well I was used to being one of one or two women.