-My journey as a programmer started early in my life. I became interested in computers after reading about them in the World Book Encyclopedia and hoped to work with them some day. What I hadn't realized was those encyclopedias were rather out of date and only showed the larger, more expensive mainframe and mini computers of the 1960s and not the more modern microcomputers of the 1970s. When I saw that an Apple II was a microcomputer and was designed for the home I began my quest to get a computer (AKA: dropping not-so-subtle hints to my parents that I wanted a computer). I scoured magazines looking for the right computer; from the Commodore VIC-20 and Sinclair ZX-80 to the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III. My parents took me to computer stores and I marveled at the machines that were there (and likely made a few sales-people nervous as I poked and prodded the rather new and 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 got a "lab" of three Commodore PET 4032 machines (with floppy disk drives) and I spent every moment I could with those machines. In high school I took several programming courses, both in BASIC and in Pascal (which was my first exposure to a higher-level language, and the 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 but there were a few that used COBOL, Ada, SNOBOL, and assembly language. I graduated with modest scores and returned home.
+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 What I didn't realize was that those encyclopedias were out-of-date and only showed the larger, more expensive mainframe and mini computers of the 1960s and not the more modern microcomputers that were introduced in the 1970s.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. My parents 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.