My First Programming Experience

Way back in the Dark Ages of Middle School (or did we call it Junior High? I don't remember any more), they had this 'program' for over-eager students (you know the type - always finishing their homework early, always asking for more work because they get bored easily, always finishing tests half an hour before their peers, always being bullied by the other students because they use big words during normal conversation) -- called 'TAG', which stands for "Talented And Gifted" but let's just keep that under our hats, shall we? Because if there is one thing that invites bullying, it's being part of a group of people known around the school as eggheads, nerds, geeks, or whatever it was they called us back then.

[I think it was 'nerds'. Didn't it come from the TV show "Happy Days"?]

Yeah, we weren't proud of our nerd status back then. Once you were known as a nerd, especially if you were a guy, you could count on at least a dozen big athletic types to give you 'friendly' arm punches (or worse) every day. Unless you knew how to all the shortcuts to avoid the main hallways between classes.

It didn't help the situation when in the middle of class the teacher would dismiss the TAG kids so that they could go downstairs to their special room next to the cafeteria, and everyone in the classroom could give you "that look" when you got up to go. Especially the big athletic types who would start rubbing their knuckles in anticipation of dishing out some "nerd handshakes" the next time they caught you outside.

Yeah, Middle School was a dream world.

The best part about TAG was hanging out with really smart kids and doing really cool things. Each year, they let us choose a project to work on, something we could use our creativity on. We could do art, or music, or math, or games, or anything we liked, so long as it was involved with learning.

My best friend, Wayne, was a TAG kid. He was much smarter than me. Mathematical. Musical. For his TAG project (we all got to pick fun projects to work on), he decided to write a musical score. He played the oboe, which was the weirdest instrument in the world because it was kind of like a clarinet, but different. You had to be really smart to play an oboe. Or really weird. Or both. Wayne was both. He and I were always laughing and making jokes. He always called me 'Oscar', as in "Oscar Mayer Hot Dogs". In fact, he called me 'Oscar' so much that I think he forgot my real name.

[Now that I think about it, I don't think he ever called me by my real name in 8th grade. So he was smart and weird and very forgetful. But he was a great friend. Except that he thought computer nerds were really weird.]

My other best friend was a girl named Joy. She was very smart and very cute and very funny, with large bushy hair and a great smile. She and Wayne and I hung out a lot because we liked to laugh and joke around, and because we were all in TAG, too. I can't remember what project she decided on, but since she was very musical, too, it was probably something similar.

I was torn between two projects that year: one was creating a stop-motion film with an 8-millimeter camera; the other was learning BASIC programming. There were several other kids interested in the movie-making project. As I recall, I was the only one interested in learning how to program computers. Oh! What to do? What to do?

It was one of those little choices you make early in your life that has a major effect on the path of your career.  Since I didn't become a movie director, you can probably guess which project I chose.

(Although I did later dabble in creating stop-motion pictures ... but that's another story.)

Back in those days, middle schools couldn't afford real computers because those things were huge monstrosities that filled entire rooms (or at least a very large closet). Instead, we had what was known as a "remote terminal", a glorified tele-typewriter connected to a real computer via a telephone line. It sat against the wall near the door and chattered happily while printing out reams of text across the yellow paper roll. Or while punching confetti holes in the paper tape which stored the computer programs.

Naturally, the TAG teacher didn't have time to spend teaching me about programming; in fact, she was the one who provided the movie camera, so she was going to be busy helping the other kids shoot their movie. And the school didn't have any other teacher who also just happened to be a computer programming expert. Most programmers were already working at big companies like IBM or GE, or for government establishments like NASA or the IRS. Any sane teacher with programming skills would've jumped ship the moment they could, and started earning big bucks rather than trying to teach idiot children how to count on their toes.

So for my project, the TAG teacher found a High School student (I think it was Charles Webb, whom some of you might remember) to come over once or twice a week to teach me. He brought over the BASIC book (the classic text by James S. Coan) and we went through it chapter by chapter until I managed to figure out what I was doing. And he taught me how to program games and math problems and ...

... it was so much FUN!

For the first time in my life, I felt in control. I had written programs that solved problems, that played games, that manipulated data. I had learned that it was actually possible to design a sequence of steps which allowed a machine to accomplish a useful objective. And if you did a good job of it, you could do amazing things! You could simulate a flight to the moon! Or lob a cannonball to its target! Or even play chess!

It was an amazing feeling of power. Of confidence. Of being able to create something that actually worked. It was a mental and emotional high that I had never experienced before. And I was all the more eager to experience again and again and again.

I would never forget those heady days of exploration and discovery. They would help determine the friends I would make and the activities I would participate in throughout my high school and college careers. They would shape and mold my goals and expectations as I decided what to do with my life.

--
In the end, it was a good thing that I didn't decide to go with the movie-making group. After all that work filming (remember that this was in the days when they used real film, and you didn't get to see the results until after you were done and had sent it out to be processed and then received your developed footage), they discovered that they had neglected to use the special close-up macro lens attachment, so the entire movie was out of focus.  I felt very bad for them.

--
The memory and joy of learning BASIC was so strong that, years later, I found a copy of the book I learned it from, and bought it. Silly, I know, but I have many fond memories of those days, and always feel a shadow of that joy when re-reading that book now that I am old and gray-haired.

My First Computer Experience

It's Groundhog Day, and we're all living in a time loop, reliving the past over and over again until we get it right. There's actually quite a few things I'd like to go back and do over again until I get them right. But I don't want to get into that right now or you'll be bored to tears.

So long as I'm living in the past, though, I'll tell you about a story I read a long time ago that had a particularly strong impact on my very young brain.

It was 1970 or '71. I was in 1st or 2nd grade -- I really can't remember which, but thanks to my book-loving parents, like my siblings I was reading at a very high level for someone so young; by 2nd grade, I was in a special 2-person reading group reading at a 6th grade level -- and my teacher had given me a book containing a set of stories (an anthology). I don't recall any of the other stories, probably because they didn't have anything to do with science or technology, and I was completely obsessed with those subjects as a child. But there was this one story that stayed with me.

You have to remember that the story was written in the mid 60s when computers were cabinet-sized monstrosities and filled entire rooms, and were attended by teams of geeks in white lab coats, or white shirts and ties with pocket protectors (the long-haired geeks with the sandals didn't show up til '67 or '68); and the 'users' were business people who typed up punch cards or paper tapes and fed them to the machines like sacrifices and then waited for their 'jobs' to run on the 'queue' so they could then receive their 'printouts' indicating the results they of the program(s) they had run.

In this story, a young school-aged girl whose mother worked in an office somehow managed to finagle access to the computer and used it to do her math homework. Her mother had given her some rudimentary training as part of showing her daughter what she did for a living, and the girl was able to use this knowledge to complete her assignments without much effort, unlike her peers.

Unfortunately, at some point she started getting the wrong answers on her homework, so she brings her mother the homework paper which has been marked up by the teacher (in red ink, I presume) and bemoans the fact that there is obviously something wrong with the computer.

The mother informs her daughter that there is nothing wrong with the computer, but there is something wrong with her understanding of how a computer works.

As her mother explains, it soon became clear that, although the computer may be faster than a human, it is not smarter. It can only do what it is programmed to do, and if you don't know how to ask the question, or you ask the wrong question, you will get the wrong answer.

The takeaway lesson for the young girl -- and the reader -- is that a computer is only a tool, and a tool is only as smart as the person using it.

So, in the end, the girl was properly ashamed that she had taking advantage of this wonderful, space-age tool when none of her peers had the opportunity to do so. As her mother pointed out, it was not fair. And like all good morality tales, the girl admitted her mistake and thereafter determined to learn how to do things herself (manually) before using the computer again.
This was the first time I recall coming to terms with the fact that computers are really nothing more than glorified calculators. It was a far cry from the impression given by all those silly movies we'd seen, like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and Desk Set, or in those Science Fiction television shows (e.g. Star Trek, Lost In Space), where computers were magical beings with unlimited knowledge.

It was also the first time I thought perhaps it might be possible to understand how they worked. And maybe even to learn to use them.

This idea would come in very handy in the years to come...