Play with Computers

I grew up digital before it was cool. When I first started playing with computers, the idea that people would buy things on the internet or hand in there homework via email were barely footnotes in text books talking about "the future". Knowing how to code the simplest things branded you a nerd. But, thank god I became a nerd.

I wrote my first program on a Commodore 64 when I was in the second grade. At the time, computers were so expensive that not only were we not allowed to bring food and drinks in the room, we had to wash our hands before we touched them. We were paired up and brought into a small tight room in my Elementary School. There was a giant keyboard attached to what we thought (at the time) was a TV.

We slowly followed along as our teacher typed out the following program and we did the same.

10 PRINT "Hello World!"

run

We got back - Hello World

Then we added:

20 GOTO 10

and got the following output:

Hello World

Hello World

Hello World

Hello World

Hello World

Hello World over and over again until we broke out of the program. We changed the colors of the background and border. We tweaked it to change colors over and over again and had a cool strobe light.

Ever since I've been playing with computers but I didn't get good with them until my uncle had purchased a Commodore 64 for my sister and my parents told me I was aloud to touch it. As a latch key kid with nothing better to do, I disobeyed my parents and played games on it until my mom or sister got home.

Then I figured out I could do something cooler than a Hello World. Over the next couple of years, I figured out how to do read input from the Joystick and move sprites around the screen.

Fast forward a few years and I was fortunate enough to be on the front edge of IT and despite not having a degree (at the time) I was able to make good money. And eventually, I was able to ride the IT wave into a great career.

I wanted to tell this story because I suspect you had a similar story. Maybe you weren't a kid and started as an adult but it starts with the exciting ideas of making something happen on the magic computer box.

A huge part of what I plan on doing with this website is to play with technology and learn new things. I should have some projects coming soon. I'm working on a Arduino, Raspberry PI and Amazon Button project. Stay tuned cause this is going to be fun.

Challenge

Imagine where we'll be at in 20 years. We're seeing people mine data to find cures for diseases, and scientists coding on their bench. If you want to give your children or any other child a great gift, teach them to code. I owe the teachers that justified the cost of the computers and took the time to show us how they worked. So let's pay it forward.

Find a fun way to help a child learn to program.