X-Git-Url: https://jxself.org/git/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=appendixa.md;h=153898fdaa41ed1cb95cf93f81ddae9120d1e1a9;hb=2295e2f946f034108c1d2af0fce8942209d1fc98;hp=75d11a1c49f3deef9182a8c5bd1401f1c54b6d3c;hpb=0b3da2c73385aa5a85018d010ab0f87e4821b586;p=themediocreprogrammer.git

diff --git a/appendixa.md b/appendixa.md
index 75d11a1..153898f 100644
--- a/appendixa.md
+++ b/appendixa.md
@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
-# Appendix A {-}
+\appendix
+
+# My journey
 
 My journey as a programmer started when I was in elementary school. I became interested in computers after reading about them in the World Book Encyclopedia and hoped to work with them some day. What I didn't realize was that those encyclopedias were out-of-date and only showed the larger, more expensive mainframe and mini-computers of the 1960s and not the more modern microcomputers that were introduced in the late 1970s. When I realized that an Apple ][ was a microcomputer and that it was designed for the home market I began my quest to get a computer of my own (AKA: I started dropping not-so-subtle hints to my parents that I wanted a computer). I scoured magazines like Popular Computing and Byte Magazine looking for the right computer; from the Commodore VIC-20 and Sinclair ZX-80 to the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III (Even the Rockwell AIM-65 or Heathkit H89 would have worked. I wasn't picky back then.) My dad took me to computer stores and I marveled at the variety of machines that were there (and likely made a few sales-people nervous as I poked and prodded the new and rather expensive machines). Finally my dad picked up an Atari 400 computer with tape drive, and I began learning BASIC programming in earnest. Around the same time my school opened a "computer lab" with three Commodore PET 4032 machines (complete with floppy disk drives), and I found myself spending every moment I could with those machines. In high school I took two programming courses, one in BASIC and the other in Pascal (which was my first exposure to procedural languages, and the basic concepts of computer science). In college I majored in Computer Science with a Bachelor of Science and did my best to keep up with all of the things that they tried to teach me. Unfortunately, I wasn't a great student (especially in mathematics). I struggled with and later dropped my compilers class, and felt like I was falling behind where other students succeeded. Most of our classes used Pascal, which I was becoming more familiar with, but there were a few classes that used COBOL, Ada, SNOBOL, C, and assembly language. I graduated with modest scores and returned home.