My Programming History

Published:July 30, 2019

My First Computer

My first computer was a Tandy Color Computer 3; a machine that would play game cartridges. If you booted without a cartridge, you entered, what we would now call, a REPL for Extended Color BASIC 2. This was some of my earliest introduction to both gaming and programming. The manual that was included promised it would teach you:

It didn't have any storage so any programes were wiped out when you turned off the machine. I remember wanting to show off a program that was a simple animation of a Yo-Yo. I had to plug the computer into my Grandparents TV and retype the program while everyone waited. Later, I got an adapter that would let me save programs to an audio cassette.

Early Programming

Most of my early "programming" experience was typing in programs from magazines and books into GW-BASIC on my grandmothers 286 PC. Later, in Highschool I graduated to using Borland C++ 5 on my own Pentium MMX PC. I remember creating some horribly memory inefficient programs for creating and editing game assets.

College

I attended Wichita State University where I learned why my previous projects were so inefficient as well as pointers, algorithms and data structures. The main language we were taught in at the time was C. We only had one semester each of Java and C++. Lisp and Assembly were packed into the same semester. Javascript wasn't mentioned and C# didn't exist.

I remember thinking, that programming wasn't really taught. We were taught syntax and data structures, but how you logically break down a problem so a computer can solve it wasn't covered. Learning was mostly done by doing. Writing the significant number of programs was how we developed our skills. Most people passed the early classes or transfered to another major; there were few failures. Even with formal education it still feels as though I am self taught.

Professional History

Professionally, I have worked in many industries: medical, communications, education and HR/Payroll. In all of these, I try to continue my self learning and improvement. I have learned and used many languages and technologies. Some still alive. Some completly dead. R.I.P. Silverlight.

The only constant in all these was change and continual learning. Hopefully, this site will be another vector for me to grow and learn. If I am lucky, others can learn from what I put here as well.