Thank you for the PreComputer 1000

[UPDATE: Apparently my memory was not as good as I first thought. :)  It wasn’t a Tandy machine at all.  It was manufactured by VTech. ]

This “Why did you become a programmer” meme was traveling around the blogosphere a while ago, and as I read the stories that others posted I made a note to myself that I should post my story.  I forgot about it until we started swapping stories at the Chicago .NET Developers Forum last month.  Considering that the next meet is tomorrow, I figured I should get this up before I completely forget about it. :)

Many moons ago, when I was a wee little child, I can remember, distinctly, my sister asking me what I wanted to do when I grew up.  I quickly answered, “Computer Communications!".  She quickly quipped back “And what exactly is that?” and I explained, “I want to make computers talk to each other.”

At that point in time, I was probably 5 or 6, and I had no clue what a computer was, what one really looked like, or even the slightest idea how to use on.  More so, I had no idea if the field of “Computer Communications” even existed.  I just thought it was a good idea. Somewhere I heard about these things, and that they held more information than you could possibly imagine.  No matter how far I stretched my arms apart, the computer could hold more than that.  I figured, if you could somehow get them talking, that would be like, double the information, which would be amazing!

After pestering my parents for a computer for a couple years, they finally broke down and bought me one. This computer was great, but it wasn’t like any that you have ever had.  I would even bet that not one person reading this has ever had one, let alone remember it.  My first computer was a VTech PreComputer 1000.  Since nobody out there even knows what that is, let me explain: Imagine an old school Model M keyboard from IBM (For those that don’t know that by name, the Model M was a keyboard that you could bludgeon somebody to death with.  It was big, bulky and generally unwieldy. It also had those really cool clickety clack keys on them. A true keyboard. :) ).  Now remove the little curly keyboard cord, and slap a handle on the right hand side.  Up top, put a 10 inch wide, 1 inch tall, black and white LED screen.

This little “computer” really couldn’t do much.  It had a couple games (hangman, learn-to-spell), had a dictionary, but not much else.  It did have this one button on it that I didn’t know what it did.  It was labeled “BASIC” but every time I pushed it, all I got was a blinking cursor.  Thankfully, my brother came home one day and showed me what it did.  He hit that BASIC key, and typed in:

10: PRINT “RYAN”

After that he hit this other funny key called “Run”.  What happened next changed my life, but to most kids it would have been boring to say the least. After hitting the button, he showed me the screen and on it, it read:

RYAN

So lame, so expected but to me it opened this crazy world of programming.  Before my brother left that day, he gave me a book on BASIC programming.  I started reading about PRINT statements and IF blocks, and I was writing code on pieces of loose-leaf paper and then typing them into my little VTech PreComputer 1000.  Hitting that Run key gave me some of the greatest joy, and some of the greatest grief.  Sometimes I could never figure out why my program wouldn’t run.  Other times it did it just they way I pictured it would.  That was some magical shit. :)

Shortly after I figured out how to write some trivial applications on that little thing, my parents broke down and bought a Packard Bell 386DX and they enrolled me in a computer programming class at my grammar school’s summer school.  The class was in the only air-conditioned room in the school, which wasn’t so cool with the banks of Apple IIs in there.  It was taught by a new teacher at the school, Miss Bogus (That was her real name (She got married that year and became Mrs. Butler)) who later became my third grade teacher.  I can’t remember everything I wrote in that class, but I do remember writing an application that would calculate how old you would be in the Year 2000.  I remember thinking, I’m going to be 18?  That’s so OLD! :)

So from those early moments on, I was hooked on computers.  My brother introduced me to VB a couple of years later, and I took some C++ classes in high school.  My computers went from the ol’ 386 to a Pentium 100, a Pentium 200 I built myself a few years later then to a homebuilt Celeron 300, followed by my current Dell laptop.  But I will never, ever forget that VTech PreComputer 1000.  Between that little psuedo computer, my brother, and the ever so wonderful Mrs. Butler I got my start in programming.  To them, I nod my cap and say thanks!