How I Got Into Computer Science (The Early Years)

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A while back, I came across a post on Mark Guzdial’s blog about a new blog on women in computing.

Among other things, they were looking for contributions from people in computing that talk about their experiences in IT. I’ve been thinking about putting some of this down ‘on paper’ for a while, so I thought, why not add my experiences. I’ve been in the ‘biz’ for over 30 years. I’ve had good times and really, really (I mean REALLY) horrible ones. So here goes.

If you’re looking for inspiration, DON’T read this post; read the second one – it has the happy, inspirational part. This post takes you to my first computer course in university and explains why I’ve never really felt like ‘one of the girls’.

Also, don’t read any of the “why I got out of CS” posts (to come later) if you’re looking for good news about women in computing, ’cause my story is not an optimistic one.

The summer before grade 11 (I was 14).

I graduated from high school in 1975. I was 16. Needless to say, my school experiences were not typical ones. I started out loving school (like many kids). I was younger than most when I started and got accelerated in grade 2 – I ended up doing grade 2, 3, and 4 in 2 years. I was part of an ‘experimental’ group of 6 girls. I have no idea what the other 5 are doing these days – we moved when I was in grade 5 and I never saw them again. I know it seems I’m going a long way back but this set up a significant situation for me that lasted until I finished high school – I was a full 2 years younger than most of my classmates and as a result I was perceived as different: ‘the smart kid’, a label I often tried to live down.

I grew up when I Dream of Jeanie and Bewitched contained the stereotypical female role models. I chose Emma Peel from The Avengers instead. Maybe that tells you something. I also avoided learning how to type. When I was in high school, typing classes prepared you for being a secretary, and I wanted to make sure I would never be qualified to be a secretary.

For as long as I can remember, my passion was animals. I now have a farm, but that’s a different story. Where all this intersects with this story is that by the time I was a senior in high school, I HATED school, had almost no friends, and had absolutely NO interest in anything technological – not exactly someone you’d expect to end up making a career in computer science. I was going to follow in Jane Goodall‘s footsteps, only I wanted to study wolves.

After graduating from high school (barely), I took some time off and worked. My first job was at the local Animal Shelter. That job ended up with my having to quit because I helped to get my bosses charged with cruelty to animals and the judge let them off, apparently not believing that these two guys could have done the things we claimed they did. They actually did do what we said they did. Welcome to the grown-up world. If you’re really good at lying and are able to terrify the people who work for you, you sometimes get away with it. That too is another story (maybe later).

After quitting the humane society I worked at a gas station (got fired for not sleeping with my boss – no big surprise there – I was 17 and he was 50ish, short and sleazy – YUK!), a sporting goods store, and a women’s clothing store. After a year and a half of working in a mall, it was time to go back to school. I was going to major in biology, of course. I started half-way through the year during the winter semester – I was still working part-time at the mall.

Unlike high school, university agreed with me. I really liked it. Remember though, it was 1977 and for the most part the only people who went to university were the people who actually wanted to go to university. At that time it was still possible to make a good life by starting to work after high school.

After scraping through high school and working retail for a year and a half, university was also quite a shock. My first 3 courses were Calculus, Physics, and Biology. I was thrilled just to survive. I got ‘adopted’ early on by another freshman who decided I should be her friend and study partner. To be honest I’m not sure if I would have made it had it not been for her and her group of friends. They were a group of about a dozen East Indians, largely from Uganda and Kenya. I’m pretty white. I have NO idea why they thought I’d make a good addition to their group, but they were friendly, kind, and generous. I learned a lot and it was exactly what I needed to get started in school. We lost touch during the summer but I will be forever grateful to them.

It was during the next year – my first full year as a student – that I took my first computer science course: “Programming for the Natural Sciences”. I recall that it was required for my biology degree.

[read on for part two…]

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How I Got Into Computer Science (The Happy Years)

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A while back, I came across a post on Mark Guzdial’s blog about a new blog on women in computing. They were looking for stories about how women get into computer science.

This post is the second in an autobiographical series about how I got into (and then out of) computer science (the first is here). I think there are some bits in here that others might find useful.

I never planned to go into computer science. I never even considered it in high school. If anything, I was thoroughly anti-technology when I started university. I was going to major in Biology.

The first piece of computer equipment I used: a Decwriter (image source: media commons)

My first semester, I took Physics. One of our labs required us to run a crude (though not at the time) computer simulation of a spring with a weight on it.

It was the first time I had ever used a computer. I was fascinated. It was fun playing with that simulation. The following semester, I took my first programming course. It was a course for majors in the natural sciences (majoring in biology, remember?). The language was FORTRAN, with SPSS thrown in during the last few weeks for good measure.

A bunch of things all came together while taking that course that ended with my decision to consider going into computer science:

  • I had an excellent instructor with a good sense of humour. He made it seem easy, and we had a lot of fun getting there. (SO, many thanks to Bill Pulleyblank for making my first experience with programming a blast. And by the way, thanks for teaching me SPSS – it got me several programming jobs that helped get me through several years of school.)
  • I had a T.A. who took me under his wing and told me he thought I could be good at this. (Neal, I owe you a lot!)
  • That same T.A. also made me feel like I was really part of something for the first time in my life. He introduced me to his office mate (who is still a good friend to this day), let me leave my stuff in his office,  invited me to sit in the faculty coffee lounge (this turned out to be the most important class I ever had), and dragged me along to the departmental Friday night dinners.

Wait. What? Departmental dinners? Professors and grad students … with a freshman?

For me, there were two main reasons I got into computer science:

  1. The culture of the department I was in was open, fun, lively, and full of optimism for the future. It was exciting!
  2. I discovered that a big part of computer science was about sorting, making lists and organizing. I LOVE organizing and making lists. Perhaps a lot of women do. I’ve never understood why we don’t play up this aspect of CS more.

The first point is HUGE. I was totally welcomed. For the first time in my life there was a group of people who liked that I was smart and who weren’t all trying to get into my pants. OK, maybe a few of them were, but they were way closer to my age than my former boss Reg from the gas station, and they were all grad students, so, they all had bright futures. And the friendships didn’t change when I said no. That was also new for me.

It might have been the perfect time to get into CS. The future looked dazzlingly bright and by the way, I didn’t even realize there was money to be made in CS until well into 3rd year. I got into it because it was cool – being able to control millions of dollars worth of high tech machinery was one hell of a power trip.

The classes were small – by the time I got to 4th year, most of my classes had fewer than 20 people in them and we all knew each other (which means we also all knew who actually knew something, who made it on the backs of others, and who cheated). Not one of our professors had a degree in computer science. In hind sight, I think this was very important. CS was too young for anyone to have a PhD in it. That meant that all of our professors had been trained in some other discipline. They learned CS by doing it – some had worked for IBM, some had worked on early mainframes, and some had been involved with computers almost from the very beginning of computers. They had a perspective that most of today’s faculty can’t even imagine. They brought a richness to the class that no amount of academy research can match. These were all people who had used computers to do real things. CS is an applied discipline – how can someone who’s never applied what they do inspire anyone?

Back to the departmental culture. It was an amazing place. This department was a place where undergraduate and graduate students mixed socially with faculty, where students like me could sit in the faculty coffee lounge and listen to professors discuss everything from politics to computer science to gossip about who was doing who in the math department (really), where sometime each Friday a bottle of wine (or two) would appear in the coffee lounge fridge so that when people started to gather around 3 or 4 in the afternoon there’d be something for us all to drink. Of course, when the wine was done it was time to go for dinner. I never had the money, but sometimes someone else had enough spare money to invite me along.

I often say that Coffee Lounge 101 was my most important subject. In that room I learned more about computer science than in any other single class, and everything about what it was to be a computer scientist.

It was also a place that let undergrads teach labs. I taught my first CS lab when I was a second year student. This was a monumental thing for me. I was always one of those girls who was painfully shy in front of crowds – any time I had to give a lab report in biology, I would stutter, my hands would shake, my face got all read and my eyes would start to water. It was awful! And that was when I was allowed to sit at my lab bench and only had to present my report to 5 other people. All of a sudden here are people who think I can teach a class! I’m sure their confidence in me had a lot to do with my ultimately becoming a CS instructor, but for the time being I tried to remember that even though I didn’t know much, I DID know more than the people in the lab I was teaching, and I would do what I could to help them learn what I knew.

I’ve heard it said that the best way to learn something is to teach it.

I ended up finishing two degrees in CS and teaching as an instructor in the same department. My years as an undergrad and grad student there were terrific years and I spent 23 years trying to share that.

(I’ll post more on the culture of the department later. It’s an important part of what drew me into CS. Besides, it’s just too good a picture to let vanish into history, especially since that same department now isn’t even a cheap imitation of what it once was.)

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Why aren’t Faculty better teachers? Prompted by a book review of: Taking Stock: Research on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education « Tony Bates

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Book review: Taking Stock: Research on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education « Tony Bates.

Sadly, I don’t actually have time to read this book just now as I am writing one of my own. However, from the sounds of this review this is one that every active faculty member SHOULD read.

A few comments that resonated with me:

the impact of educational research on faculty-teaching practice and student-learning experience has been negligible.

‘much of our current approach to teaching in higher education might best be described as practices of convenience, to the extent that traditional pedagogical approaches continue to predominate. Such practices are convenient insofar as large numbers of students can be efficiently processed through the system. As far as learning effectiveness is concerned, however, such practices are decidedly inconvenient, as they fall far short of what is needed in terms of fostering self-directed learning, transformative learning, or learning that lasts.’

‘…research suggests that there is an association between how faculty teach and how students learn, and how students learn and the learning outcomes achieved. Further, research suggests that many faculty members teach in ways that are not particularly helpful to deep learning. Much of this research has been known for decades, yet we continue to teach in ways that are contrary to these findings.’

I posted this on FB this morning, and one reply suggested that giving faculty smaller classes and more time would improve the situation. In other words, he thought that faculty would improve their teaching if only they had more time.

After 33 years in academia, I don’t.

The way people teach has far more to do with what faculty value and far less to do with class size or available time. I don’t believe that most of the faculty actually would improve their teaching. What is it that faculty are rewarded for? Teaching? Hardly. If they had more time, most of them would simply publish more and write more grant applications. This is often true even in education faculties.

Many, perhaps even MOST faculty don’t value teaching – especially in “research institutions”. They see it as a chore. I know faculty who routinely have small classes and VERY low teaching loads and their teaching still sucks. All they care about is getting grants and putting their names on papers. Notice I didn’t say publishing. I dare you to find a professor who has NEVER put his or her name on a paper that he or she didn’t actually write (at least in part). I know a few, but my point is, I know VERY few. And I know LOTS of professors.

The longer I stay on the periphery of the Academy, the better my perspective. 20 years ago I could NOT understand why ANYONE would ever want to leave the Academy. Now I absolutely get it.

Faculty are forever bellyaching about how the ‘system’ is this or that, but the truth is, the faculty ARE the system. Faculty make the rules. That’s what institutional governance is all about. THE FACULTY THEMSELVES decide what is important and, more to the point, THEY decide how their colleagues (and they) are assessed and how they get tenure and promotions.

So, take your pick:

1. change the system,

or, to put it bluntly,

2. STFU.

There is a third option: leave.
I ended up being forced to choose Door Number 3 because there was only ONE other person in my department (out of 45) who was actually willing to stand up and try to change things. I had plenty of people telling me how much they were behind me, and how much they agreed with me,…. but none of them were willing to risk anything.

Remember that story about The Little Red Hen? Well, that’s pretty much what happens. Except in this story, the little red hen ends up having to move away just so she can grow her grain and make her bread without the other critters trying to ruin her work.

After all’s said and done, people don’t actually like someone who will raise the bar.

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Can computers take the place of teachers? – CNN.com

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Can computers take the place of teachers? – CNN.com.

By Sugata Mitra, Special to CNN
September 26, 2010 11:48 a.m. EDT

Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer deserves to be.

This is a rewording by David Thornburg of the original Arthur C Clarke quote (“Teachers that can be replaced by a machine should be.”)  It’s pretty good though.

If a teacher feels threatened by a computer – then that teacher really needs to take a good hard look at what and how they are teaching. being afraid of a computer is OK. No. Wait. That’s not OK either.

Come on. I mean really. Computers have been around for a while now – it’s time to stop viewing them as new-fangled anything and start treating them as tools. We don’t treat pencils and books that way (although it’s an interesting thought).

We are rapidly approaching the point where people who don’t know how to read and send email, look at things on the web (and even find some of them), and do basic word-processing are about as far out of touch with society as people who couldn’t read in the 1950’s.

Computers can not take the place of a GOOD teacher, but they sure can make great tools for them. They probably can take the place of a bad teacher.

That having been said, I’ll take a mediocre teacher that lets their students use the computer over a mediocre teacher who doesn’t ANY DAY.

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Growing up does not mean forgetting how to be joyful.

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Growing up is not about getting serious – it’s about putting the joy and wonder of childhood into context, and remembering to still have fun. That’s not all it’s about but that’s certainly an essential ingredient.

From the U of Saskatchewan Student Newspaper: The Sheaf

Fred Penner built a great career as a family entertainer, and as a parent, I always enjoyed going to his concerts with my kids – the music was great. He has good songs that EVERYONE can enjoy (not all that saccharine stuff); he has good musicians; and he has a good voice. Without attempting to take anything away from him, I will add that this is a standard of quality we have come to expect from our Canadian family performers (Al Simmons, Sharon, Lois and Bram,…). He’s actually part of the reason we CAN expect this standard of quality.

His Christmas album remains one of my favorite Christmas albums (ever). It was originally released in 1993 as “The Season” and has been re-released under the name “Christmastime” in 2008.

So what’s Fred doing now? He’s doing college and university gigs!!! That’s right – and there are plenty of people who were kids in the 80’s who are thrilled to be able to revisit their childhoods and go to another Fred Penner concert.

How cool is that?

My daughter was at the concert he did at Mount Royal College. She felt like she was 5 again (which for most of us is a reeeely good feeling). Now, she happened to know some of the security staff there and they invited her “backstage” (it was an outdoor concert so backstage was a tent) to meet Fred. Just as we had all suspected – Fred is the same nice guy we all saw on his TV show. Even better, my daughter got to sing a song with Fred, just the two of them, just for fun.

So I repeat,

How cool is that?!

Only in Canada. Sometimes I am reminded of how happy I am to be Canadian.

See also:

Resurrecting our inner child | The Sheaf.

Fred Penner finds his place at Hugh’s Room, Childhood favourite gains new status as Toronto’s musical granddaddy, By Natascha Malta, Staff Writer, Issue date: 4/1/10 Section: Film & Music

This one’s from UBC I think:

Listen to how much fun these guys are having!
There is hope for humanity yet…

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A Day in the Life – Then and Now

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I have a former colleague who sometimes posts about how busy her life is – she is a professor as well as being a wife & mother, and her days are pretty full.

That got me to thinking about my own schedule. Like her, I too often get people asking me how I manage to get all the things done that I need to do, so I thought I’d step back and take a look at what my typical day is like and how it has changed going from full-time, to part-time, to at home. I too have been faculty at a university trying to juggle the responsibilities that go along with that as well as my home life. My home life is not typical – not even for a female academic. True, I have children and a husband, but (as you already know if you’ve read some of my other posts) I also run a farm with lots of animals. In the spring time I run a duck hatching program with local schools as well.

My schedules have changed quite considerably in the last few years – you see, I have gone from being full-time faculty to being part-time faculty, to working almost entirely from home. Oddly, I haven’t noticed much difference in the amount of free time I have and if I had to rank them, I’d have to say that the year I spent working as part-time faculty was probably the busiest of all, especially in the spring.

Part-time faculty at universities often end up working harder than most full-timers (for a fraction of the pay). I experienced that first-hand during the 15 years I was a part-time instructor at the university while raising my children. I could have been career-building during that time, but instead we (it was very much a joint decision) decided it was important for us to raise our own children rather than have a day-care do it. My children are almost grown now and we made the right decision. I’ve talked with dozens of elementary teachers – they all say they can tell if a child grew up at home or in a day-care. You don’t hear much about this because it’s not PC to admit – but kids raised by their family are more polite, more stable, and more confident than those raised in day-cares.

I used to get jealous of those women who continued on with their careers instead of being with their children – but now that I can see what my kids have turned into, I know it was worth the cost. Interestingly, my brother and his wife made the same decision – I’m pretty sure they have no regrets either.

I like my life. It is full and varied. I often wonder what people do with their time who DON’T run a farm, and do research, and do outreach, and have a family,….

Typical Weekday

Full-Time

Part-Time

Now

6:30-7:00

Morning farm chores

~~~~~~ Email, read news ~~~~~~

7:00-7:30

Spend time with family as they get ready for school/work

7:30-8:00

Take son to bus, head for work

Do class prep & marking

Work on book (I have a contract with a major publisher to write a book on simulation & games)

8:00-8:30

8:30-9:00

Work here includes:

– teaching 2 classes (and my own labs)

– class prep

– marking

– maintaining course & other websites (I maintain about 6 sites in addition to my courses)

– admin meetings

– student meetings

– reviewing papers submitted to various conferences & journals

– correspondence

– working on various bits of research and writing various papers (I average 10 or so publications a year)

– talking with various faculty, students, and staff (only some of which is really work)

9:00-9:30

Morning farm chores

9:30-10:00

10:00-10:30

Drive to work

Work here includes: – research, writing & revising for the book

– maintaining various websites (including 2 I maintain for other groups)

– reviewing papers submitted to various conferences & journals

– correspondence

– working on various other bits of research and writing various papers (this year I will likely produce fewer publications)

10:30-11:00

11:00-11:30

Work here includes:

– teaching 2 classes (and my own labs)

– class prep

– marking

– maintaining course websites (I maintain about 6 sites in addition to my courses)

– admin meetings

– student meetings

– reviewing papers submitted to various conferences & journals

– correspondence

– working on various bits of research and writing various papers (I average 10 or so publications a year)

– talking with various faculty, students, and staff (only some of which is really work)

11:30-12:00

12:00-12:30

12:30-1:00

1:00-1:30

1:30-2:00

2:00-2:30

2:30-3:00

3:00-3:30

3:30-4:00

4:00-4:30

Drive home

4:30-5:00

5:00-5:30

Spend time with family

5:30-6:00

6:00-6:30

Drive home

Spend time with family

6:30-7:00

7:00-7:30

Spend time with family

7:30-8:00

8:00-8:30

Evening farm chores

8:30-9:00

9:00-9:30

Family time; email & other correspondence; organize tomorrow’s schedule

9:30-10:00

10:00-11:00

Typical Weekday

Full-Time

Part-Time

Now

6:30-7:00

Morning farm chores

~~~~~~ Email, read news ~~~~~~

7:00-7:30

Spend time with family as they get ready for school/work

7:30-8:00

Take son to bus, head for work

Do class prep & marking

Work on book

8:00-8:30

8:30-9:00

Work here includes:

– teaching 2 classes (and my own labs)

– class prep

– marking

– maintaining course & other websites (I maintain about 6 sites in addition to my courses)

– admin meetings

– student meetings

– reviewing papers submitted to various conferences & journals

– correspondence

– working on various bits of research and writing various papers (I average 10 or so publications a year)

– talking with various faculty, students, and staff (only some of which is really work)

9:00-9:30

Morning farm chores

9:30-10:00

10:00-10:30

Drive to work

Work here includes: – research, writing & revising for the book

– maintaining various websites (including 2 I maintain for other groups)

– reviewing papers submitted to various conferences & journals

– correspondence

– working on various other bits of research and writing various papers (this year I will likely produce fewer publications)

10:30-11:00

11:00-11:30

Work here includes:

– teaching 2 classes (and my own labs)

– class prep

– marking

– maintaining course websites (I maintain about 6 sites in addition to my courses)

– admin meetings

– student meetings

– reviewing papers submitted to various conferences & journals

– correspondence

– working on various bits of research and writing various papers (I average 10 or so publications a year)

– talking with various faculty, students, and staff (only some of which is really work)

11:30-12:00

12:00-12:30

12:30-1:00

1:00-1:30

1:30-2:00

2:00-2:30

2:30-3:00

3:00-3:30

3:30-4:00

4:00-4:30

Drive home

4:30-5:00

5:00-5:30

Spend time with family

5:30-6:00

6:00-6:30

Drive home

Spend time with family

6:30-7:00

7:00-7:30

Spend time with family

7:30-8:00

8:00-8:30

Evening farm chores

8:30-9:00

9:00-9:30

Family time; email & other correspondence; organize tomorrow’s schedule

9:30-10:00

10:00-11:00

This ‘typical’ schedule, of course assumes that everything goes smoothly. There are days when chores take MUCH longer – animals often have their own ideas about how they should spend their day, like escaping, or breaking things, or getting hurt,…

And just in case you are wondering, I do a lot more farm work on weekends – there are cages to clean, fences to fix, animals to sort, etc.

In the spring-time when I’m running my hatching program, I have to find a way to fit the time that takes into my schedule. Normally that means part of Saturday, all day Sunday (well, 9-5 anyway), and Wednesday evenings (from after chores till after 11 – to wash, sort, candle and set eggs), plus extra time throughout the week (and weekend) to handle the additional correspondence and phone calls to manage the orders and make sure the teachers have success, and of course the added time it takes to look after sometimes dozens of baby ducks, chicks, and turkeys of various ages. For 21 years I’ve been doing this for 12 weeks every spring. This year, I’m cutting back. I might even get to celebrate Mother’s Day this year. First time in 22 years. Cool.

Well, back to work. I’m still adjusting to being home all the time. Don’t get me wrong – I can go weeks without ever leaving my property (if you don’t count excursions on horseback or walking with the dogs) and be completely content. Working on a book though is much like working on a thesis – no matter what you are doing there is a little voice in the back of your mind telling you you should be writing.

So, back to writing. Then chores (we just had 4 new litters of rabbits – bringing my current total bunny-count to 80. Yikes.).

Then back to writing…..

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Comments on “The overblown crisis in American education” in The New Yorker

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The overblown crisis in American education : The New Yorker.

The author is claiming that things aren’t that bad. More people are going to school than they did 100 years ago and there are lots more wanting to get in.

Sadly, more is not better.

The fact that a greater percentage of citizens go to school than they did 100 years ago is really nothing remarkable – that is true of every developed nation on earth.

What is remarkable is the fact that compared to 100 years ago, ‘educated’ Americans are demonstrably less literate, less aware of the world around them, less curious, and less capable than they were then. This is not only true if you compare educated Americans against educated Americans of 100 years ago, but also true if you compare educated Americans against educated citizens of almost every other western nation, and that’s why there is a crisis in education.

I think that having had the position of ‘best’ in the past, there is a tendency for people to become complacent.

There was a time when the US was the place everyone looked to for innovation, for models of entrepreneurialism and leadership.

There was also a time when the sun never set on the British Empire. It does now. Things change.

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On website passwords…..

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Digital Domain – A Strong Password Isn’t the Strongest Security – NYTimes.com.

I agree with most of this. It should be MY business to choose a good password, and IT’s business to keep their system secure if I choose a bad one. It is not my job to make their job easy. I am so tired of sites that make me formulate a specific kind of password:

  • more than n letters
  • NO more than  m letters (as if storage space for ASCII characters were at a premium)
  • MUST have letters, numbers and special characters
  • MUST NOT have special characters
  • MUST have upper and lower case
  • yadda yadda yadda

If you have multiple accounts with multiple groups (as most people do these days) you end up needing to write these down, or relying on the “I forgot my password” link.

Truth is, those sites that let you know the “strength” of your password as you type it in without forcing you to do anything are MUCH more likely to encourage people to create better passwords than the ones that piss people off by forcing all kinds of contortions. (See the book: Switch).

IT folks take note: If your system is unable to protect itself against some schmuck who lets a stranger guess his password and log in, YOU SHOULD ALL BE FIRED. If your system allows ordinary users (like the aforementioned schmuck) the kind of access to your system that will permit access to sensitive system data, then YOU are not doing YOUR job right.

I worked at a place last year that upgraded their file system and INSISTED that everyone change their password. Not only that, they checked that new password against the old one and refused to allow me to re-use my old one. As far as I’m concerned, they have NO business storing my old password and checking. That amounts to little more than an IT power trip – they do this because they CAN, not because there is any evidence that it improves security.

Actually when it comes to that, most of what an IT department does in the realm of security is done for one of two reasons:

  1. They CAN.
  2. It makes THEIR lives simpler.

Try this game sometime: Ask your IT guy to show you the evidence (stats, reports, numbers) that what they are proposing/requiring will actually make things more secure. They rarely can.

Really, if you want to encourage people to create reasonably secure passwords, run a password checker from time to time, and send mail to people whose passwords are too easy to guess. If faculty don’t change their password after, say two or three warnings, then announce it ‘publicly’ (i.e. within the faculty mail system).

And by the way, I should be able to use ANY character on the keyboard in my password including blanks. The only exception I can think of is the “return” character, because you still need some way to mark the end of your password.

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