% Initial thoughts
% [Mike Gordon](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/)
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I've reached the [compulsory retirement
age](http://www.equality-law.co.uk/news/2305/66/Cambridge-academics-approve-compulsory-retirement-age-for-intergenerational-fairness)
for Cambridge University faculty. Shortly after retiring I made this
page to help me decide what to do next.
A year later I made another web page:
[Retirement progress report: what I did in 2016](Report1.html).
----------
~~~~
~~~~
\newpage
New Career?
===========
Past members of the Computer Laboratory headed off to new careers
after they retired. [Maurice
Wilkes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Wilkes) joined [DEC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Corporation)
in the US and after that returned to a position at [ORL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_Research_Laboratory)
in Cambridge. [Roger
Needham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Needham) set up [MSR
Cambridge](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/labs/cambridge/)
and became its first director. These people were extremely eminent,
had sought-after skills, and scary amounts of energy - all of these I
totally lack. I don't think it would be easy for me to get a new job,
so it's fortunate that, thanks to index-linked [Final-Salary](http://www.pensions.admin.cam.ac.uk/uss/final-salary-section)
and [State](https://www.gov.uk/state-pension/overview)
pensions, I don't need one. I'm basking in a relaxed lifestyle with
few commitments and am enjoying winding down.
Continuing research?
====================
Here's a question someone asked when I told them that I'd reached the
[compulsory retirement
age](http://www.equality-law.co.uk/news/2305/66/Cambridge-academics-approve-compulsory-retirement-age-for-intergenerational-fairness)
for Cambridge University faculty.
> "Congratulations on reaching retirement. Will you continue research with an emeritus position?"
I have an [automatically-granted emeritus
position](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/Emeritus.html) and I'm
still employed one day a week in a temporary job bearing the
impressive title [Director of
Research](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/DirectorOfResearch.html). This
job is only for a couple of years and is partly "to support ongoing
community activities (e.g. research workshops) for which there are
funds provided" and partly so that I can remain as a co-investigator
on the [REMS
project](http://rems.io). At present, these activities don't
consume a day a week, so I have time on my hands that needs
filling. Continuing research is a natural thing to consider, but what
might this consist in? Over the 40 years of my career the nature of
the "research" I did has evolved.
I started doing research as a PhD student at Edinburgh in 1970. After
my PhD I got a job working as a research associate (RA) for John
McCarthy at Stanford and after that I returned to Edinburgh as an RA
for Robin Milner. In 1981 I became a lecturer at Cambridge, where I
stayed until I retired in 2015. My research activities can be split
into three phases.
1. **Actually doing research.** When I first starting research I'd
work directly on trying to come up with new ideas to solve
problems. Initially these were somewhat mathematical and consisted in
inventing concepts and doing pencil and paper proofs. After returning
to Edinburgh to be one of Milner's RAs, I moved on to proof
mechanisation. This consisted in writing programs in Lisp and ML to
support automated reasoning in formal logics.
2. **Working with students and RAs.** As soon as I got my lecturing
job at Cambridge, I began to acquire PhD students to supervise and
funding to hire RAs. This resulted in a growing part of my time being
spent on discussing approaches to solving problems with others, rather
than actually working on them myself.
3. **Facilitating other people's research.** After a few years I had
lots of PhD students (I think the most I ever had at once was about
ten). I was also running projects supporting several RAs. By the mid
1990s my research activity consisted almost entirely in supervising
other people's research, managing projects and writing proposals to
procure funding for new ones. Although I continued to try to spend
some time working directly on research problems, the results were not
nearly as good as those coming from PhD students and RAs.
Being employed part time after retirement in an unestablished capacity
precludes me from continuing the research activities I was doing just
before I retired. Computer Laboratory rules require PhD students to
have a faculty member as their primary supervisor. As I'm no longer on
the faculty, I therefore cannot supervise students (though I could be
a second supervisor). The situation is analogous for applying for new
funding: if I wanted to make a grant application, I'd first need to
recruit a faculty member to hold the grant and be the principal
investigator and then I could only be a co-investigator. Continuing
research will therefore have to consist in something different from
what I've been doing for the last few years.
During the two years prior to retiring from my faculty position I was
a [deputy head of
department](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/Blog/ShortListOfDeputyHeadJobs.html)
for research. One of my tasks was to assist the other deputy head in
planning future expansion of the Computer Laboratory. This gave me an
opportunity to find out what was going on in the field of computer
science beyond my narrow area of expertise. I thus retired with some
appreciation of what future research challenges might be. I also
realised that what expertise I still had was embarrassingly out of
date. To get up to speed with the latest advances, even in my area,
would require a lot of technically challenging effort.
Doing research is alluring, but I don't think it's realistic. I have
retired friends and colleagues still engaged in awesome original work,
but I'm not confident that I could manage this myself. I foresee a
hard time competing with researchers who are 40 years younger, but I
don't rule out trying if I get inspired. I want to find activities
that exploit the wisdom I've acquired from my years of experience that
doesn't depend on having a young person's brain and energy.
Produce books?
==============
As an academic I had to teach as well as do research. At first I found
giving lectures very stressful, but after a while I got used to it,
though I never came to enjoy the lecturing aspect of teaching. I've
always been a slow thinker and perhaps the reason I didn't like
lecturing is because I couldn't think fast enough to speak
spontaneously, so I resorted to reading slides. I was aware this
increased the likelihood of [the
lectures being boring](https://vimeo.com/101543862#t=20m42s), even
if the material was well organised. I enjoyed giving one-off research
presentations and hope at least these were less wooden than my course
lectures.
Although I didn't like lecturing courses, I mostly enjoyed preparing
course material such as slides and notes, and I produced a couple of
books based on my undergraduate course notes. Writing a book is
something I've been considering as a retirement activity -- but what
kind of book? Possibilities coming to mind are:
1. A compilation of my recent lecture notes.
+ These notes contain extended and updated extracts of one of my
already published books (currently out of print). Producing a
second edition or new version doesn't really excite me. Also,
the material is somewhat dated and covered better in other books
that are still in print.
2. An overview of recent research in an area I know about.
+ This could be seeded by [a
report](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/SwanseaTalk/tex/paper/report.pdf)
written for the funders of projects I was involved in
managing. This assumes that the funders and the people who did
the research would be happy. Such a book would have a limited
audience and would probably already be out of date as soon as it
was finished.
3. Tutorials on topics that I'm familiar with or would enjoy learning.
+ This is quite appealing! Such a book could contain invited
articles by other authors as well as material written by me.
Perhaps I could recruit a collaborator as a co-editor.
4. Some kind of historical review of developments in, say, the last 30 years.
+ I enjoyed writing a historical [review of a paper by Robin
Milner](http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/2039/20140234)
for the Royal Society. Something in this style covering a much
wider area and work by others is a definite possibility.
5. Scientific reminiscences.
+ In the first draft of [*Christopher Strachey: recollections of his
influence*](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=609211) I
described my personal experience of meeting Strachey, but this was
removed by an editor. Although I have no juicy revelations about
Strachey, or anyone else, maybe some of my memories of those I've
met or worked with are worth recording -- there's probably not
enough for a book though.
Write articles?
===============
A bad aspect of my pressure-free current state is the difficulty of
starting non-urgent activities. Thinking about a book project is
easier than actually getting down to work on it! A commonly suggested
cure for procrastination is splitting tasks into smaller less-daunting
bits. Writing short articles is less intimidating than embarking on a
whole book, so this may be a more realistic activity --- and maybe
articles can eventually evolve into chapters of a book! A
particularly low effort kind of article is a web page, perhaps
published as a blog post.
I can imagine composing a variety of articles ranging from ephemera
dashed off in a morning to pieces of writing resembling academic
papers. Perhaps I might set up a
blog and put the articles there. Here are some possible
categories of articles.
1. Reflections on life:
+ such as this
2. Historical notes:
+ autobiographical
+ gossip
+ accumulated wisdom
3. Technical stuff:
+ opinions
+ tutorials
+ research ideas
4. Advice from experience
+ teaching
+ research
+ supervising
I've been making a list of more concrete ideas [here](ArticleIdeas.html).
Do some programming?
=====================
When I was working for McCarthy at Stanford, an elderly [Art
Samuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Samuel) was spending
his retirement implementing and maintaining the [E text
editor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_%28text_editor%29) and he
later went on to [contribute to
TeX](https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb11-4/tb30knut-samuel.pdf).
Today my retired colleague [Martin Richards](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/)
is in the Computer Lab most days programming BCPL for [Rasberry
Pi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi) and writing
his ["Young Person's Guide to BCPL programming on the
Raspberry
Pi"](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/mr/bcpl4raspi.pdf). These
retirement activities are inspiring. I'm not a great programmer, but
perhaps I could find some project that would be fun for me and also
useful for others. Maybe developing infrastructure for the [HOL4](https://hol-theorem-prover.org/) system,
which I'm familiar with, or some tutorial [CakeML](https://cakeml.org/) programs.
Organise workshops?
===================
This is one of the things I'm supposed to do according to the job
description associated with my current position. I enjoyed
co-organising small invited workshops such as the following:
* [Workshop on Interactive Theorem
Proving](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/GC6/Meeting.ITP.Summer09.html)
* [Third Workshop on Theorem Proving in
Certification](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/FMStandardsWorkshop/)
* The FMATS series: [FMATS1](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/Meeting.SecurityTools.2011/FMATS1.html),
[FMATS2](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/FMATS2/),
[FMATS3](http://verificationinstitute.org/event/third-workshop-on-formal-methods-and-tools-for-security-fmats3/),
[FMATS4](https://verificationinstitute.org/event/fourth-workshop-on-formal-methods-and-tools-for-security-fmats4/)
These were partly funded by generous support from a government
agency. There is still some money left and I am wondering what the
next workshop I could help organise might be. Maybe FMATS5 (though
FMATS is now run by [Philippa Gardner](http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~pg/))?
Maybe something on [CakeML](https://cakeml.org/), which I'm a big fan
of?
What I'm doing now
==================
It's relatively easy to write articles, so that's what I'm doing. My
aim is to start with a few short pieces, some on historical and
personal stuff and others more technical: this web page has some ideas and this one is my progress so
far.
Although trying to write a few articles is my current goal, I'm also
spending time just exploring areas I stumble across or
some event triggers an interest in.
For example, a few months ago I had lunch with an old friend who is a
biologist. I realised I knew nothing about modern biology, so I
audited a couple of online courses (Udacity's [Tales from the
Genome](https://www.udacity.com/course/tales-from-the-genome--bio110)
and Harvard's [Fundamentals of
Neuroscience](https://www.mcb80x.org/)) to try to get an
impression of some of the things that have happened since did O-level
biology in the 1960s.
To try to achieve [10,000 steps a
day](http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/loseweight/Pages/10000stepschallenge.aspx),
I've taken to going on walks whilst listening to podcasts. At the
moment I'm enjoying [Nature](http://feeds.nature.com/nature/podcast/current),
[The
Partially Examined Life](https://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/),
[Elucidations](http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/podcasts/elucidations.html)
and [Philosophy
Bites](http://www.philosophybites.com/).
Having the time to do such unplanned freewheeling things without
feeling guilt or having pressure-of-work deadlines is a liberating
aspect of being retired. I feel like being on sabbatical, but without
the growing realisation that time is running out and freedom from
academic chores will soon be over.
Using Pandoc
============
I've been experimenting with [Pandoc](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/) for
producing web pages and matching [PDF
documents](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/plans/WhatToDo.pdf).
I've written [some
documentation](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/plans/AboutWhatToDo.html)
for myself that explains how Pandoc [source
text](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/plans/WhatToDo.txt) is
converted to [HTML](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/plans/WhatToDo.html)
and [PDF](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mjcg/plans/WhatToDo.pdf).