Today's the day to say it.... I'm an Apple II kid

Today's the day to say it loud and clear: I'm an Apple II kid....

I grew up in Toowoomba, Australia, and had the good fortune to go to a (then somewhat radical) primary school which had an Apple II+ for use in Year 6 and 7. I guess it was 1979-1982. My brother had already taught me the joys of a programmable HP calculator, and my Dad had taught us the joys of 8'' floppy disks and programming Mastermind games on his (Digital?) machine at work. At primary school we got to set our own timetables, and I included a share on the computer, plus time at lunch with Mitchell, Duncan and others - fun times and good memories. 

Then my Dad bought an Apple IIe, and, well, that was that. We wrote everything with it: farming software, games, bush fire simulators for science projects, essays, economic simulators, physics projects and goodness knows what else... Lots of Applesoft BASIC (which I only recently discovered came from Microsoft!), lots of learning about Logo, assembly code, peeks, pokes, shape tables, direct screen addressing...There was a local Apple store in this shop - we went there most weekends. The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same.

I'm an Apple II kid, and in many ways still am.  Thanks Steve (Jobs), thanks Steve (Wozniak), and thanks Apple, and thanks to the friends, primary school and father who gave me the chance to dive deep so early.

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 07, 2011
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  November 07, 2011
  I had a similar experience at a school in a rural area of Virginia (USA) around the same time period. Gregor Kiczales, a very nice guy, was friends with my sister. He gave me a beta disk containing MIT Logo and a pile of books to read. I probably would not have wound up as a programmer without access to the Apple II and help from nice people.