My first exposure to an actual computer was the one I saw in the eighth grade in one of the rooms at the school. (This would have been in 1973). I don't remember the model of machine that it was but I do remember they used it for tabulating student grades. I think I knew already by then that I wanted to know how that thing worked.
I became fascinated with portable "computing" devices when I saw the add for the "Bowmar Brain" pocket calculator. From that point I was hooked. I
had to have something like that! A year or so later I had a Sears desk calculator with a liquid crystal display. That was a NICE unit. I mastered the thing in 10 minutes.
My next real exposure to automatic computers was the HP programmable calculator we were shown in my chemistry class in the 10th grade. It was running a program called "Lunar Lander" which displayed its progress both on the red LED display and on a printed output. This was in 1974. The machine was larger and heavier than my present i5 notebook machine.
2 years in Japan at the Yokosuka Naval Base. Continuing to develop my math education as a junior/senior at Nile C. Kinnick High School. Going nuts over the calculator technology that I'm both observing and buying in Akihabara (in Tokyo). By now I had a Casio FX-101. I mastered the whole machine as I had mastered my 24-scale slide rule by that time.
On to Georgia Tech in 1976. Discovery of large computer through my first actual programming class (EE-1010). Programming FORTRAN using punch cards and an 026/029 keypunch, express card reader and express page printer. Running the FORTRAN on a CDC Cyber 74 Mainframe. I was so hooked on the whole thing I practically ignored all my other classes. Was routinely thrown out of the computer center at 4AM only to re-appear there at 7AM when they re-opened.
I could spend several hours detailing my history from that point forward, but that's where it got its start. I have done nothing else but write code for a living since that time. I literally lived through the entire PC revolution on the front lines Acquiring my first IBM PC in 1983. Working all day at a job writing FORTRAN on a PR1ME minicomputer and writing MASM, BASIC, and FORTRAN on my PC by night. Same schedule: up until 4AM, back at it at 7AM.
Since then I've worked for companies doing process control, O/S development and many other markets. I wouldn't trade any of it.
-Max
