Preface

I’ve been programming for fun since seventh grade in 1984 and professionally since around 1991/1992. During that time, I’ve see a lot of change. In the ’80s, as the personal computer industry was trying to settle, there were dozens of completely incompatible (both software- and hardware-wise) computers available to the public. In my small group of friends, some owned Commodore 64s, some Commodore VIC-20s, a couple of Apple II variants, a TRS-80 or two, and a couple of others I can’t recall. My middle school (properly called a junior high school in Massachusetts) was equipped with some DEC VT-102 Robins, a handful of Commodore VIC-20s (with their disk drive on a serial A/B switch to share between different computers), and a number of Commodore 64 computers. My high school had an Apple IIgs, a couple of Apple IIe computers, and several Apple II computers. Later, they got an Apple IIc and several knock-off Apple clones as well as a lone black-and-white Macintosh. The few computer-literate teachers had access to a handful of IBM PCs to do the serious work of tracking student grades and whatnot. The computer camp I attended in tenth grade used DEC Rainbows and Commodore PETs. The computer competition I attended in tenth grade required knowing Unix and C.