Day when Skynet becomes self-aware, and 69 reasons to chill out with colleagues. Part 2.

Sometimes it's difficult to come up with a reason for gathering and hanging out with your colleagues. You may say that we have official holidays and birthdays — yeah, that's right — but it's still quite a few. And we found a way out!

After surfing the internet and chatting with our colleagues, we can say that there're much more holidays for developers than it seems. We're pretty sure that our digest will make you happier, and maybe even surprise you. We ourselves learned about many holidays only when writing the article.

So, now you'll have more reasons to get together with colleagues after hard-working days. We place all holidays in calendar order. Suppose it makes your reading experience easier.

The first part is available here.

Jule 26 — Sysadmin Day

Every year on the last Friday of July, the "shadow" workers celebrate their professional holiday. It's time to express your gratitude to your system admins.

August 6 — Kevin David Mitnick's Birthday

In the mid-90s, Kevin Mitnick was one of the most famous and wanted computer hackers. Mitnick smartly hacked the corporate and U.S. government networks and bypassed most security systems. He even wiretapped the FBI agents, extracted gigabytes of confidential information, and bank card data. Moreover, he stole the data of the Silicon Valley executives. After he solved all US legal issues, Kevin Mitnick turned into one of the top computer security experts.

August 9 — Marvin Lee Minsky's Birthday

Marvin Lee Minsky was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory. In 1951, he built the first connectionist neural network learning machine, the SNARC.

August 11 — Stephen Gary Wozniak's Birthday

Stephen Wozniak is an American inventor, electronics engineer, and programmer. In 1976, he has co-founded Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne. In the mid-70s, he single-handedly designed Apple I and Apple II computers that started "microcomputer revolution" and set the direction of the industry.

August 12 — First PC Birthday

The greatest innovation which turned the development of the IT industry upside down. On August 12, 1981, IBM introduced the first personal computer for the mass market, IBM 5150. Before that, the computing technology was extremely expensive. So, thanks to everyone involved in such an awesome thing.

August 20 — John Carmack's Birthday

John Carmack is a computer programmer, co-founder and former CTO of the id Software company. He was the lead developer of the video games such as Doom, Rage, Commander Keen, and their sequels. John Carmack is known for his innovations in 3D computer graphics, especially for his Carmack's Reverse algorithm for shadow volumes.

August 25 — Linux OS Birthday

One of the most key events in the history of open-source software took place on this day. The history of this system went back to 1991, when the first version of the software was developed. Since then, it has been installed on millions of PCs and handheld devices.

August 29 — Day when Skynet became self-aware

Skynet is a supercomputer built by Cyberdyne Systems for the US military to coordinate the US military arsenal. Skynet became self-aware on August 29, 1997, at 02:14 a.m., EDT. In a panic, humans tried to shut down Skynet. In response, Skynet decided to destroy humanity and launched a nuclear strike on Russia.

August 31 — Blog Day

The idea appeared in 2005 when some active LiveJournal users had found the similarity between the "blog" word and the "3108" number. Therefore, the date of the holiday was established on August 31 (31.08). On this day, many people try to meet colleagues from other countries through blogging. It's a good way to make new and useful contacts!

September 4 — John McCarthy's Birthday

Have you heard about "artificial intelligence", the Lisp programming language, and the time-sharing concept? John McCarthy, a scientist and innovator, created and developed all of these. Thanks to him and his ideas, AI is still being developed to this day, and we can use ChatGPT for our own good.

September 9 — World First Computer Bug

On September 9, 1947, the operators of the Mark II computer found something curious. This was a moth. The legendary Grace Murray Hopper, known as "Amazing Grace" and "Grandma COBOL", found a moth stuck between relay contacts in Relay N70 on Panel F.

September 9 — Tester's Day

The incident described in a previous paragraph pushed people to establish a day of testers who look for these "moths", i.e. bugs. After that, people started to call this "debugging" (literally: getting rid of an insect).

September 9 — Dennis Ritchie's Birthday

Dennis Ritchie was a pioneer of computer science and played a key role in the development of the C programming language and the Unix OS. So many reasons to get together on this date! Don't miss the opportunity!

September 19 — Smiley Birthday

On this day in 1982, Scott Fahlman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, offered to expand the internet vocabulary. He proposed using three symbols: colon, hyphen, and closing parenthesis to indicate a "smiley face" :-) in text that is typed on a computer. Now, smiley is an unchangeable part of every chat.

September 26 — Day Nothing Happened

On that day, something that should have happened did not happened. On September 26, 1983, the Oko system malfunctioned. It reported that the United States had launched the Minuteman ICBM. The world was on the verge of a global nuclear war. The Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, an operational duty officer of the Serpukhov-15 command post, decided that the alarm was false.

Interesting fact: almost every country has its own "Day Nothing Happened".

September 27 — Google Birthday

"Google" is a verb that has become an integral part of our vocabulary. We owe it to the Google search engine. The system was registered on September 4, 1998, but since 2002 the company has been celebrating its anniversaries on different days of September. Most often it was on the 27th. Why is it so? Nobody knows. But who cares — let's celebrate it!

October 21 — Global Encryption Day

Global Encryption Day was established to remind us why encryption matters in protecting human rights and internet freedom. Encryption helps us protect our privacy, freedom of speech and right to information. Let's stand together against all attempts to restrict or ban encryption! How to do it? Try to discuss it with your colleagues over a cup of tea.

October 28 — Bill Gates's Birthday

Bill Gates, the Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, celebrates his birthday on this day. He has received the title from Queen Elizabeth II for his achievements in technology development and philanthropy. Indeed, he has contributed quite a lot to this world, for example, he founded Microsoft. It's hard to imagine our life without his inventions.

October 29 — First Message Over ARPANET

An important event takes place on this day — it has a huge role in the history of the development of communication and the internet. A group of computer scientists from the United States successfully transmitted the first message over the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). So, this is the day to write an important message to colleagues and invite them to have a little fun.

November 10 — First Computer Virus Day

On this day, Fred Cohen, the USC graduate student, showed a short program that infected, replicated, and spread to other computers for 5–60 minutes. The following year, Cohen wrote a paper in which he not only predicted the danger of viruses but also the appearance of security systems.

November 11 — International Energy Saving Day

Tell us: how many hours per day do you spend on your devices and computers? Sure, you spend a lot. This holiday was established to relax and take care of natural resources. So, let's leave our computers, drop our phones, and go for a walk!

November 15 — Intel 4004 Release Day

The evolutionary process that leads to creation of modern microcomputers was extremely rapid. It's worth mentioning here a day that is a major milestone in the history of computer science. The Intel® 4004 microprocessor, released on November 15, 1971, started a revolution in electronics.

November 16 — David Patterson's Birthday

David Patterson is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Patterson is known for his contributions to the research of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) processor, RAID (Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks) and NOW (Network of Workstations).

November 20 — Microsoft Windows 1.0x First Release

Today Windows is one of the most popular operating systems. Now it's a familiar and user-friendly environment used by many people. At its first release, Windows was far from the full-featured OS that we're familiar with now. The simple, yet innovative first version of Windows provided many tools. Users could use Paint, Microsoft Write, and the legendary Reversi board game.

November 23 — First Smartphone Day

Nowadays we can't imagine our life without a device with all the bells and whistles. However, do you know what the first smartphone looked like? The first personal digital assistant appeared in the early 1990s. The idea to mix the functions of a cell phone and PDA doesn't take long to catch on. The IBM Simon is regarded as one of the first such devices. It was first presented on November 23, 1992, by IBM.

November 26 — World Information Day

This holiday has been celebrated every year since 1994, reminding us how important information is. If people don't know how to carefully use information technologies and information itself, it leads to terrible outcomes.

November 30 — International Computer Security Day

In 1988, the Computer Hardware Association of America announced November 30 as International Computer Security Day. This holiday reminds users how important it is to protect their computers and stored data.

December 3 — John Backus's Birthday

John Backus was one of the inventors who developed the first high-level programming language, FORTRAN. He invented BNF (the Backus-Naur form), a widely used notation to define formal language syntax. He also popularized the function-level programming paradigm.

December 9 — Computer Mouse Birthday

A computer mouse is undoubtedly an important part of each computer. It helps us click where we need to. On December 9, 1968, Douglas Engelbart, an American inventor, who worked at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), demonstrated the first computer mouse at the Fall Joint Computer Conference.

December 9 — Grace Hopper's Birthday

Another reason to get out that day is the birthday of the great Grace Hopper. She was a computer scientist and invented the first compiler for the A-0 programming language, "the A Compiler". Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming language, which led to the creation of COBOL.

December 10 — Release of the Doom game

Doom is one of the most iconic computer games in the history of GameDev. Its popularity has influenced further development and spread of the first-person shooters. Have you played, though? :)

December 26 — Charles Babbage's Birthday

The English mathematician Charles Babbage invented the first Analytical Engine and the Difference Engine. He also originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. He wrote works on the theory of functions and the economy of machinery. The community should thank this great man.

December 28 — Linus Torvalds' Birthday

Linus Torvalds is probably the most famous Finnish programmer in the world. He is the founder and coordinator of the modern "religion". And the name of it is Linux. Linus is truly one of the greatest icons of the computer world. Let's have a drink for him and his health :)

December 30 — Bjarne Stroustrup's Birthday

Bjarne Stroustrup is a computer scientist who developed the C language with Dennis Ritchie. In 1978, he started developing the C++ language. Today, thanks to it, many developers write in this language. Many OS and browsers, cars and ATMs, websites like YouTube and programs like Photoshop are written in C++.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading our digest! Perhaps you've discovered new events from the IT world. We hope we've motivated you to chill with your colleagues and make plans for the year ahead.