{"id":3795,"date":"2012-12-12T00:01:37","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T07:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=3795"},"modified":"2012-12-08T13:27:43","modified_gmt":"2012-12-08T20:27:43","slug":"computer-encounters-of-the-first-kind-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=3795","title":{"rendered":"Computer Encounters of the First Kind, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had several friends in college who were into computers. They encouraged me to take the intro course on programming. I’m glad I didn’t. If I did, I would have had to switch majors, probably end up at school for another three years, and probably had a different career. That’s because it turns out that I really understand computers. They’re natural to me.
\n
\nAt the time, I didn’t think so. Back in college, I wasn’t into math. I failed Calculus, so I figured I’d bomb at computers as well. Computers are all about math, right? But what I didn’t know is that computers did the math for you.<\/p>\n

There was a VAX mainframe on campus and terminals all over. A computer account was free, so I had one; I reasoned I was paying for it, even if I didn’t need it.<\/p>\n

The campus was festooned with Apple II+ computers, which the professors used for word processing. I wanted a word processor, but couldn’t afford an Apple II+. The VAX didn’t make for good word processing, though I used it that way. I also ran a few games. But no, I had no interest in computers.<\/p>\n

One of my friends, the same one who encouraged me to take a programming course, invited me into the computer lab one day. We were going to get lunch or something, so I waited while he attempted to finish an assignment.<\/p>\n

His assignment was to use the Logo programming language<\/a> to create a hexagram on the screen. He was having a heck of a time trying to figure it out. I was getting hungry.<\/p>\n

When I’m hungry, I can get grumpy.<\/p>\n

So I finally decided to pay attention. I looked at what he was doing and after about a minute of staring, I told him what to type. At first, he didn’t believe me. “Dan, you don’t know what this is.” He was right, of course. Then I insisted that he try it. He did, and a hexagram appeared on the screen.<\/p>\n

I tried to explain how I came up with it. At that point, the proctor came around to listen. The proctor wanted to kick me out of the lab. He said, “You’ve had this class before.” I looked at him and said, “I’ve never programmed a computer in my life. I hate computers.”<\/p>\n

Rather than bicker with me, he told me that I was a natural and that I should sign up for the course. I declined, still believing I had no interest in computers.<\/p>\n

By the time I graduated, I had purchased my own computer and was programming it. That makes me wonder, truly, had I changed majors, where would I be now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had several friends in college who were into computers. They encouraged me to take the intro course on programming. I’m glad I didn’t. If I did, I would have had to switch majors, probably end up at school for another three years, and probably had a different career. That’s because it turns out that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3795"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3807,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3795\/revisions\/3807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}