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Q&A: How did you get into software?

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I got into computers and assorted geekery early. My dad was always an enthusiast, and so I grew up with his somewhat eccentric collection of computers.

My dad's, and thus my, first computer was a Timex-Sinclair 1000. I remember my dad buying magazines with programs printed in them, which we would painstakingly type on the little keyboard. Dad had the thermal printer, the 16-KB RAM pack (necessary for playing Frogger), and the cassette deck for data storage (also required for Frogger -- I'm sure that there were other tapes, but I only remember Frogger). The computer overheated easily; my dad took to putting a big glass of ice water on it to keep it cool. I'm sure Dad still has this computer, and all of its accessories, stuck in a closet somewhere.

The next computer that I remember was a Radio Shack Model 100, which I think we got when I was 7. Instead of simply copying programs out of magazines to type into it, Dad bought a book (which, I have to admit, I still remember fondly), and together, we learned BASIC. The way he tells the story now, I was a better programmer than he was, although that might just be him editing the story after the fact to match up with my current position. :) I'm sure that there's at least one of these stuck in a closet somewhere at my parents' house, too.

In high school, we had a single computer class, which I took. It was my first introduction to an Apple. I don't remember much about it, other than continually getting in trouble for getting to school early, waiting for the teacher to go to the lounge to get his coffee, and running a program on all of the computers in his lab to play a little jingle whenever someone tried to type on them.

Somewhere around this time, Dad got his first PC and discovered MS-DOS, and then became an early adopter of Windows. My best memories are of the Sierra games, most particularly (another computer thing which got me into trouble; if you're starting to sense a theme, you'd be right) Leisure Suit Larry. I'm not sure that my high school programming course taught me a lot about programming that I didn't already know, but it made a difference to learn that there were other kids who was interested in computers too.

In college, I met OS 7 for the first time in my programming class. Being 1993, the language of choice for an introductory programming class was Pascal, and Turbo Pascal was the compiler we used. Turbo Pascal celebrated its 25th anniversary this week; Anders Hejlsberg, the original author and now here at Microsoft, offers up his memories of it here. When I worked as the medical director of a Girl Scout camp the summer after my freshman year of college, my camp nickname was Dr Pascal, because I always had my nose stuck in a programming book.

That's all part of what got me here today. If my dad hadn't been so excited about computing and got me to learn programming with him when I was a kid, where would I be today? I can't even begin to imagine.

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