35 years of programming

35 years of programming

Literature class, May 1990. Outside classroom windows of School 528: poplars, fence, and a basketball court. Farther away, behind the kindergarten, the Rot Front factory. Clear weather, no thick chocolate smell over the district.

The day before, I had read in Ketkov’s book what a loop is: a construct that lets you perform the same thing multiple times. Before that I had been drawing a snowman with circles. Suddenly it clicks in my head: combine the two and you get a program drawing many circles. I write code on a sheet of graph paper.

I no longer remember exactly how I ran it. There were not many options: either my father brought home from work a rare unseen beast - a laptop where qbasic could be started. Or I went to my father’s workplace and sat at a big computer there.

But however it happened, that was the beginning. An idea clicked in my head, and I became deeply curious to see what would happen if you actually do it. Then shock: it really worked.