I like hearing stories about how people got into computers and programming. Perhaps if I blog my story, you’ll share yours.
I went to school in NE Portland in a small and diverse but relatively poor elementary school. I remember the first time a computer showed up in class. It was fifth grade – I think I was 11 – and the computer was an Apple ][. There was only the one computer. This was the 80s and these were $2600 machines if you got the full 48Kb of RAM.
Before I discovered computers I was, in fact, a typewriter nerd. Yes, that existed. I took typing class on old manual (not IBM Selectric) typewriters and I was the kid in class that repaired the typewriters. I remember spending hours trying to figure out what each typewriter needed to fix a stuck key or repair a carriage that wouldn’t return.
via Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen
Screenshot: The original Oregon Trail computer game. (Photo credit: The_Pug_Father via Flickr)
