When I was considering taking computer programming courses in the very early 1980s, I went to a short introductory evening course with other people looking to enter the field. One person in the class was a woman accountant who had not yet worked in programming but was employed by a custom software firm that wrote the Medicaid programs for New York City. She taught the rest of us what being "the lowest bidder" involves. This accountant's company wanted to test their new version of Medicaid software and gave blank application forms (perhaps similar to machine graded school tests) to their non-programming staff to fill out with "any error they could think up" in order to test the veracity of their latest project before it was installed on a government computer. On a whim, the lady accountant came up with a very unusual test. She filled out an application to pay maternity benefits (there were no federal paternity benefits in those years) for a pregnant man. Much to the embarrassment...(Read Full Post)