14.1. Learning and Teaching

I read that you started working at Ericsson knowing nearly nothing about programming. How did you learn?

Ivar Jacobson: I started working at Ericsson without knowing anything about telecommunications. It was a valuable experience. Even though I worked in a division that developed hardware switches, I could abstract from that the whole idea of building large systems. I worked there for almost four years, and I learned how to think about systems in general. That knowledge was very unique, because people who developed software had no experience in building large systems.