We’ve come a long way since the first computers, to having handheld devices that allow us to do just about everything from banking, translating, shopping, communicating, filming and more. Former Valley resident Carl Gable Watts, developed a keen interest in computers and programming as a youth, which led him on to a career in it.
“I was born and raised in Swan River in the neighborhood along the river that is now called Duncan Crescent,” said Watts. “My father was A. J. (Jack) Watts who had owned and run the Ford Motors dealership that was once on the NE corner of Main Street and 6th Avenue.
“Our neighbourhood was nestled in a curve of the Swan River and my childhood friends Linda Theodore, Barbra Weiller, Jeff Ukalchuk, Terry Hather, Tim Wenstob, Cameron Cook, and John Jacobs would spend every waking moment either on, in, or next to the river doing things like jumping rocks, swimming, tubing, building forts, catching crayfish, snow mobiling, and sledding on crazy carpets. I have a million great memories of those years.
“I had developed a fascination with electronic gadgets when I was younger,” said Watts. “When walking home from school I’d regularly drop in to the Radio Shack on Main Street to check out what new fascinating gadgets they had.
“One day they had this new thing that I’d never heard of before: a personal computer. It was 1980, I was 14, and this was one of the first. They had left the instruction manual out for it so every day, on my walk home from school, I’d stop at Radio Shack and read a page or two of the manual and type out the little example programs and run them.
“Quickly I was hooked and started the months long process of pestering my mom to buy it for me,” said Watts. “That was how I learned to program. By grade 11, I was a good programmer and helped my teachers teach the first programming classes at Swan Valley Regional Secondary School (SVRSS).”
From there, Watts embarked on advancing his education in computers.
“I left Swan River to attend the University of Manitoba in the fall of 1983,” said Watts. “Four years of university and living in the dorms on campus were incredibly fun. I made so many friends from all over the world and had another million adventures.
“I studied Computer Science and, in the fall of 1987, I graduated with my Bachelor of Science majoring in Computer Science.”
During the course of his career, Watts worked on various computer programming projects that led to bigger developments in technology. Much of his work focused on computer languages used for programming.
“My first job out of university was with Bell Northern Research in Ottawa,” said Watts. “Our team of about 15 people were designing a new computer language for programming the digital telephone switches that routed everyone’s phone calls. In addition to creating the programming language we also developed one of the first Integrated Development Environments (IDE) for writing programs in this new language.
“Later, in California, I also helped develop the first fully Object-Oriented programming language, Smalltalk, and the IDE that it was integrated with. Smalltalk inspired the creation of the programming languages Java, Python, and Ruby which inspired almost all programming languages we use today.
“I also worked on the development of one of the first handheld computers, the Palm Pilot, and the first smart-phone, the Palm Treo,” said Watts.
Watts recognizes that the times have changed and with that so has creating computer software. It can be very complex to start in now, but it’s something he still enjoys being a part of.
“Creating computer software now is very complex,” said Watts. “When I started out, a large program was 30 lines of code. Now the software I work with is regularly hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lines of code and takes months for a new programmer joining the project to understand.
“Fortunately, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is very good at being able to read hundreds of thousands of lines of code in a minute and creating summaries of what each section of the code is doing and where the problems are.
“I enjoy writing software that can solve a particular need for the company I work for and see it run quickly and reliably for years solving that particular need every day,” said Watts. “It is kind of like creating a new life-form that lives and breathes and fulfills a necessary niche in the computer ecosystem in which it lives.
“I also appreciate that it pays well, which allows me to take a year off between jobs to relax, travel, and enjoy myself. I took my first year off in 1995 and travelled around Mexico for five months, in an old Volkswagen camper, with my partner at that time. We had adventures every day which I will cherish forever.
“Since then my career has given me the freedom to regularly take whole years off between jobs to do whatever I want, which usually involves lots of swimming, boats, sunshine, cafes, new friends, and card games,” said Watts.
Watts is now focusing on his own programming projects and has been working lots with AI to achieve that.
“Now I’m using AI to create my own programming projects, mostly online card games and board games, and, in my work, using AI to create new software to automate the financial company I work for,” said Watts.
“But my biggest projects now are my relationships with my partner, Anthony, and all my friends, and the adventures I continue to have sailing the seven seas, exploring the world, on cruise ships. I love sailing the seas on medium-sized cruise ships and exploring new countries.”