I had a very close friend studying Computer Science in 1974, and hung around with him late into the evening sometimes at Merrill Engineering. He mentioned this new UNIX Operating System which he called the way of the future. I ended up with a Computer Science undergraduate degree a few years later, and first encountered UNIX in 1986. By 1988 I was doing UNIX Kernel development, and worked on the standards committees for IEEE POSIX, X/Open, and Unix International (UI) for several years. Those were some the most enjoyable, heady times of my long career in Software Development.
There are probably others on the board who have some familiarity with that technology and those times.
I remember learning BASIC on a “State of the Art” Apple II Plus my senior year in HS. Later in College I learned COBOL while playing around in the UVCC computer room. I never chased a degree in coding, but it was fun and I do believe a lot of the processes I learned helped me better understand organizational structure and culture, and better critical thinking skills.
I saw this article yesterday and I’m glad you posted it.Thank you so much for your contributions to society and elevating the U - which has an excellent computer science program
When I was about 11 or 12 my best friend’s dad worked the computer center at Merrill, he must have been working on the ARPA net, circa 1972-73. We played these rudimentary computer games on teletypes connected to the Univac 1108 mainframe.
One was a simulation game where you had X units of rocket fuel to slow your descent to the moon, clearly inspired by Apollo. Another was an exploration game called “Cave”. One evening we were playing, and another person appeared in a “room”. Since nobody else was in the office at Merrill, I asked who it was. “Must be one of the guys at Stanford”.
Decades later it occurred to me we were some of the original Internet gamers, even if there were no graphics involved. I don’t think any of those Arpanet pioneers had any idea what their creation would become.
I remember going to the arcade in the time of asteroids. When that was brand new, there was a game whose name I forgot, that was just a little flimsy little stick figure lander You’d have to try to bring in on a vector trajectory and land it (at least as good as Neil did). It was fun but hard
My dad had a “reverse polish” HP calculator and bought one for me as well. I played the lunar landing game on that calculator too many times to know. This was in the mid-late 70’s.
I learned basic programming in HS by preparing hollerith cards for the teacher to take to the district office and run the program.
When you think of all that Unix/Linux is powering and/or has influenced today… maybe the most powerful and influential yet unknown software that will ever be developed. Unbelievable. How cool that you were involved how you were.
