How I Got Interested in Computers
---------------------------------
.. continuing on from "How I Got Into Computers" ...
In the previous installment[1] I wrote about how external
factors (work and school) led me to ever-greater engagement
with computing in the 80s and 90s. But, curiously, I chose
to leave off the account before reaching the point where I
actually became interested in computers. So that's what this
is about. And although it didn't set out to be, it's also a
partial answer to christyotwisty's thought-provoking
question, "what keeps you buoyant?"[2]
However, I did touch a little on what got me interested in
computing back in the spring, in my eulogy for poet and
artist Tim McLaughlin.[3] To recap: having spent the 80s
under a rock, in the early 90s it was news to me that
personal computers weren't just more efficient typewriters
and filing cabinets, but could be a creative medium in their
own right. And of course, it was the advent of
hypermedia/the web that really brought this home.
Now, the following activities/pastimes, in various
permutations, have long helped to keep me buoyant:
- exploring and (to a lesser extent) participating in
various historical and present-day subcultures. For
example, science fiction fandom, or (in my youth) the
local Edmonton music scene.
- obsessively digging into random, often obscure topics that
few if anyone besides me still cares about. (So, who here
can tell me anything about the poet V.R. Lang and her
artistic circle in 1950s Boston? ... Bueller?)
- making things, even when the resulting things aren't very
good. The joy is in the making, whether it be making masks
and puppets in my childhood, painting and drawing at
different points during my adult life, or (more recently)
writing phlog posts.
I could probably write at least a short phlog post on each
of these, and perhaps at some point I will. But in the
context of this post, you can perhaps begin to discern why
computing came to fascinate me.
Subcultures: It's probably not news to anyone here that
computing is filled with fascinating subcultures, from the
original hackers at MIT, to the Demo Scene, to underground
hackers like Cult of the Dead Cow, or Hack-tic Netwerk in
Amsterdam, or more recently the various subcultures loosely
grouped together as the smolnet.
Random, Obscure Topics: Computing history is full of
technologies that went nowhere and have since faded into
obscurity. I am coming up now on the 10 year anniversary of
my ongoing project to research, recover and restore Telidon
videotex. It's been a deep, rewarding dive, and I would be
truly surprised (but delighted!) to encounter anyone who
knows more than I do about the topic.
And, most importantly ...
Making Things: It started, innocently enough, with the
desire to make web pages. At first I had no idea what that
would involve and even wondered if it might be beyond my
capabilities. After all, didn't making things with computer
code involve math, a discipline I had never made any great
progress in? So I trepidatiously bought myself a copy of
Laura Lemay's "Teach Yourself Web Publishing With HTML In A
Week," taught myself basic HTML in less time than that, and
realized my fears of inadequacy were probably unfounded.
Buoyed by my newfound confidence I next picked up a copy of
"Learning Perl" by Randall Schwartz. The learning curve
there was markedly more steep, but I surprised myself by
methodically working my way through it, even going so far as
to complete the exercises at the end of each chapter. Turned
out coding was fun! As I recall, my first independently
designed and developed perl program was something one might
call a "static site generator" if one was being really,
really generous (static sites being the only kind I was
building at the time).
When I realized my newly acquired skills had applicability
beyond my hobby projects - that they were useful in my
various day jobs - I got really hooked, and spent the better
part of the next ten years extending those abilities in all
kinds of ways, even as the bookshelf began to sag under the
weight of all those O'Reilly titles. Eventually I moved into
management where I have less time for such things, but even
so I continue to employ my programming/development skills
(and develop them, albeit at a somewhat slower pace) in my
various research and hobby projects. Good times indeed.
I see we still haven't covered how I got into Linux. Maybe
next time.
References
----------
[1] How I Got Into Computers
sdf.org:70/0/users/jdd/phlog/20241116-computer-bio.txt
[2] Well, Look Who's Here
sdf.org:70/0/users/christyotwisty/phlog/2024-11-16.txt
(welcome back, christyotwisty, I am glad you're posting
again)
[3] Tim McLaughlin
sdf.org:70/0/users/jdd/phlog/20240525-tmcl.txt
