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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-10-18 12:26 pm (UTC)My first exposure to computers (other than some stuff I saw at science fairs, was when my electronics teacher recommended me to a no credit computer course for high school students at Gonzaga U in Spokane.
That was back in 1971-72. I learned FORTRAN IV on an IBM 360. And how to keypunch.
I managed to use dimensional analysis (something I'd picked up from an Analog article years before to take the problem I'd been assigned for a final and simplify it to a *very* short program. But on my own I did a program to "fake" some calculus I wasn't up to (figuring out how acceleration & velocity varied with distance for an object falling from a *long* way above the earth). That apparently impressed the instructor enough that I got a good grade.
I was also taking a class in logic in high school (for an English credit!) and got extra credit writing a program to evaluate logical statements (in Lukascwiecz(sp) notation)
I went on to take a computer programmer/operator course at Portland Community College (they were seperate tracks, but there were only two classes difference). I learned assembler for the ancient Honeywell (6-bit bytes) and unofficially learned BASIC using the terminals in the library.
Didn't complete the courses, and didn't have any more contact with computers until a hoousemate got a TRS-80 Model 1 in 1978 or 79. I got a Model III in December of 1980. Got a modem in March of 81. And got into BBSes because the Byte magazine list of BBSes (all the BBSes in the world fit on a single page at the time) had 2 systems listed in Portland.
Got onto usenet a few years later.
One of my more interesting moments was being one of the folks on rec.arts.sf.science who answered questions from a guy trying to write a novel. Stuff about antimatter and KE weapons.
Some years later, after a post on Baen's Bar, he emailed me to ask in I was the same person as xxxx on rasfs. And I admitted that I was. Some guy named Ringo... :-)
It was funny, I'd bought the books and not realized it was the story that "some guy" had been asking questions about years before. :-)
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Date: 2012-10-18 01:17 pm (UTC)