Sunday, May 01, 2011

 

10 PRINT "Hello World!"       20 GOTO 10

I remember learning BASIC on my cousin's Atari. I forgot the model number now; I think it was the 3 or 4 series, the one after the touch type keyboard. I had such a Wow! feeling when I tried my first BASIC program. After that point I knew I wanted to try larger programs. Some years later in middle school I learned BASIC's graphics coordinate system in a computer programming class. I was thinking this is so cool, what can I draw? At the time I really enjoyed playing Super Mario Bros. so I mapped out almost a pixel by pixel blown up picture of Mario on paper, figured out the coordinates and began programming it in.

A few weeks ago I learned about Paul Allen's memoir "Idea Man". I managed to catch some of his TV interviews on Charlie Rose and some other show on CBS/ABC or NBC(Sorry I forgot which one.). I had heard of Paul Allen before as the co-founder of Microsoft but didn't really know much about him. I only knew that he was the older co-founder, invested in Metricom, and the owner of the Portland Trailblazers and the Seattle Seahawks. I felt sympathetic for him when the interviewers kept pressing him about his, to put it mildly, a challenging relationship with Bill Gates. My thinking was I'm sure the book has lots of other stories besides just Bill Gates, why the third degree? At any rate I decided I wanted to read his memoir.

The book was finally available at my local library this weekend and I picked it up Saturday afternoon. I finished it today before dinner.

I realized that the BASIC programming I did was in a way made possible through Paul Allen's and Microsoft's efforts in getting BASIC out to as many computers as possible. I was quite amazed at his stories of working weird hours getting things to work. He goes over it like a badge of honor and as someone who has done it before I'm again quite amazed.

ah, getting late... more some other time...

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