The Bits Go Marching By – Part 1

I still remember the day, at 10 years old, that my dad came home with the box with a picture of a strange device on it. It looked sort of like our Atari 2600 and ColecoVision had created a love child, but instead of joysticks it had keys like a typewriter. My dad connected to the TV by adding yet another RF switch to a growing chain (picture the Christmas lights in the Christmas Story but with small boxes that had a two-position switch labeled TV/Game). It was, in fact, a Texas Instruments 99/4A.

My first memory after that was sitting down in front of the thing and opening a three-ring binder with the instruction manual that promised to teach me BASIC. It was interesting, but I can’t say I was compelled to sit down and bang out hundreds or thousands of lines of code. My great thrill (and greatest agony), though, was entering line after line of text out of magazines like Compute! and saving them to audio cassette so I could play a new game. This was before electronic BBS’s (Bulletin Board Systems) were popular (no modem!) and certainly way before the Internet. The only way to get new software was type it in, buy expensive cartridges, or trade tapes with friends. All of my friends had the much cooler Commodore 64, so trading was out of the question.

In the sixth grade, I remember there was some discussion about “What are you going to be when you grow up?” and list of possible careers was presented. I only knew that I wanted to do something with computers. The options related to computers were (I’m not kidding): Programmer, Electronics Engineer, and Systems Analyst. That’s it, nothing else. Well, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to program and I had no idea how to design hardware. That must mean Systems Analyst was for me, right? The System Analyst was described (I remember this clearly) as the person who was the middleman between the users and the programmers. In other words, the suits and geeks couldn’t speak the same language and they needed someone to translate. More on that later.

In Junior High, I aced all of the computer literacy tests they made us take. For those of us who scored the highest, we took a second test which was ranked somehow. I think I won a prize for that, I can’t really remember (I do remember winning 2nd in the Bike Rodeo). So, naturally, I joined the computer club and took computer classes. By the time it was all said I was done, I was the President of the Computer Club and I was showing the teacher things she didn’t know the computers could do. Love live the Commodore PET!

Side note: I thought I was being clever by signing up as a Student Aide in the 8th grade for my Computer Science teacher, but she changed to being a math teacher over the summer. I spent a whole year grading math papers, yay!

In High School I discovered Computer Science classes and began learning Pascal. Because our campus was split in two and separated by a half-mile, there were classes we could take that weren’t always advertised because they didn’t want too many kids busing back and forth. So, I found out about the CS classes at the end of my sophomore year but all of my friends had already taken the first CS class and were going to the advanced class (as I could have). So, I convinced the naive 22-year-old, fresh out of college Computer Science teacher to let me study over the summer and she would test me at the beginning of the year. If I passed, she would move me to the advanced class. I studied hard and passed her test. I enjoyed the advanced Computer Science class and learned a lot about myself and my abilities that year. I wrote a trivia program as a class project which I thought was very clever.

At the time, there was no curriculum for Computer Science beyond the advanced class. However, we got approval to create a more advanced class my senior year and our teacher was supposed to come up with her own curriculum which would be submitted to the state for possible inclusion in a future expanded curriculum. The only problem was that the class had to be scheduled in the same room and same time as the advanced CS class we had all just come from. So our poor teacher had to teach two classes, two curricula in the same classroom at the same time.

We started out reading a book by Peter Norton on microcomputer architecture and learning some assembly language programming. I think that lasted a few weeks before we just stopped doing anything and played Scorched Earth and Joust VGA – we were all Seniors and the teacher never paid much attention to us. Near the end of the first semester, we had to write a term paper. I remember doing it on some Artificial Intelligence programing language (LISP or some such). I’m not sure how she determined our grades, but I think the term paper was about the only graded work we did all semester. Near the end of the year, we were supposed to do another term paper. However, none of us had even started it the week before it was due. The teacher wanted some furniture moved and we traded our labor for not having to do the term paper. I’m absolutely positive we had no graded work that semester, but I got an A!

My senior year wasn’t a total blow off. The teacher recruited me to the Computer Programming team and the UIL Computer Science competition. The Computer Programming contests consisted of teams of 2 or 3 which each had to supply their own computer equipment, compiler, and printer. At the beginning of the competition you would receive a packet of problems. Some would be relatively simple and worth a few points. Some would be more complex and worth more points. At the end of the two hour competition, the team with the most points would win. You would have to write the program and submit the source code and the output showing the correct answer in order to receive the points for the problem.

The year that I joined there were actually 5 team members. I ended up on the team of two with a friend of mine who was much, much better at coding than I was. However, we worked well together and quickly learned what worked best was that he would type in the code while I diagrammed the high-level logic on scratch paper and pointed out typing mistakes. That’s right, Pair Programming, only we didn’t think of a cool name like that at the time. We managed to get 4th place at the regional competition while the other team got 2nd. However, due to some unknown circumstances (who was I to question) we got bumped up and both teams got selected to go to the state competition.

At the state competition, my teammate and I pulled an all-niter before the competition. Let’s just say we were in a hotel in a new city with no supervision (our hot 23-year-old CS teacher had her own room) and we had several computers (one for competition, one for backup). LAN party, baby!

I’ll bet you’re thinking we got last place or something because we were too tired and blew the chance we had to really show the world what we could accomplish. Not so, we did better than the team that got a good night’s sleep. However, we paid the price when we passed out after the competition and everyone else went to Six Flags. If you can’t tell, I’m awfully proud that we got 10th place at a state competition against some of the best and brightest Computer Science students from the largest high schools in the state.

I’ll bet your sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for find out what happens next. Does he go on to becoming a programming prodigy? What about college? Career? Fame? Infamy? And of course, what about Bob?

You’ll have to wait to find out in the next installment – The Bits Go Marching By – Part 2.