Please Don’t Call It Trash-80: A 35th Anniversary Salute to Radio Shack’s TRS-80 | Techland | TIME.com:
The Tandy TRS-80 was the launching point of my computer career. From the moment I wrote my first program on it to say "hello world", and learned Basic programming language, I was hooked and I never stopped being fascinated with computers. It was during the summer of 1982 when I was floundering and wasn't sure about much of anything, much less my future career. My mother found a flier for a computer programming course at Radio Shack, and for once, I thought she had a good idea.
That summer, I was also trying to decide whether or not to join my High School swim team. I was going into my sophomore year, and everything seemed confusing, larger than life, and difficult. When I wasn't at the neighborhood pool, staring at the bikini-clad lifeguard, trying to make every excuse possible to spend more time there while no-one (I mean no-one) else swam there that summer, I was at Radio Shack, learning to program. I can still smell the dot matrix printer paper, and see the plastic spiral training guide to my right in that Radio Shack classroom. I remember spending more time than other people doing my programs. I didn't need more time, and most of the people in my class answered the teacher's question, "Why are you here", with something like, "I know computers are important, and I want to learn them". Hey, I'd just seen Tron, and I was damned sure that I was going to get on top of this shit and learn to make something cool for myself. I tried to finish my assignments from the book as quickly as possible so that I could move away from the boring stuff, and try modifying the commands to do more, see more, and update faster. I learned how to make arrays, the basic decision constructs (I fell in love with case statements), assignment commands, and logical operators.
I was a skinny, athletic but shy kid with a low self image, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I could control something, give it commands, and send it out into the world to print and delete pixels to a screen to make sparkling patterns, and print the words, "Top of the World Ma" (From the old movie, Heat with James Cagney). Coming from a house where color TV's were a luxury, this TRS-80 computer was amazing. When I was done programming, I actually could save my program on a disk, and take it with me. That was even cooler. By the time summer was ending, I was on a first name basis with that TRS-80, I had the lifeguard's phone number, and Lainey (lifeguard) convinced me to join the swim team. By the end of my senior year of HS, I got A's in all of my computer classes, aced Trig (related I guess), and was one of the top swimmers in my state. That Tandy computer had a lot to do with all of that.
Today, I'm reflecting back on a still growing 23 year career in the computer industry. I majored in MIS with CS in college, and aced all of my computer classes, graduating with the highest honors from my college at the UofA. I worked as a programmer/analyst at Digital Equipment Corporation, and then at Intel designing and building software statistical process control systems for the semiconductor industry. After 17 years at Intel, I went full time to the web via MySpace to become a Director of Engineering. Several Director roles later, I'm a Director of Analytics at ValueClick. Analytics was the perfect landing spot for me at this point in my longish career. It combines all of the original fascination and discovery I remember from my early days programming that TRS-80, with my unexplained love for statistics and Trigonometry, marrying with it all of my experience developing SPC systems and databases at Intel. Tandy treated me well, and even though I've owned nearly 20 different computers since, just like your first car, that TRS-80 stole my heart.
- Chris Bridges
'via Blog this'
The Tandy TRS-80 was the launching point of my computer career. From the moment I wrote my first program on it to say "hello world", and learned Basic programming language, I was hooked and I never stopped being fascinated with computers. It was during the summer of 1982 when I was floundering and wasn't sure about much of anything, much less my future career. My mother found a flier for a computer programming course at Radio Shack, and for once, I thought she had a good idea.
That summer, I was also trying to decide whether or not to join my High School swim team. I was going into my sophomore year, and everything seemed confusing, larger than life, and difficult. When I wasn't at the neighborhood pool, staring at the bikini-clad lifeguard, trying to make every excuse possible to spend more time there while no-one (I mean no-one) else swam there that summer, I was at Radio Shack, learning to program. I can still smell the dot matrix printer paper, and see the plastic spiral training guide to my right in that Radio Shack classroom. I remember spending more time than other people doing my programs. I didn't need more time, and most of the people in my class answered the teacher's question, "Why are you here", with something like, "I know computers are important, and I want to learn them". Hey, I'd just seen Tron, and I was damned sure that I was going to get on top of this shit and learn to make something cool for myself. I tried to finish my assignments from the book as quickly as possible so that I could move away from the boring stuff, and try modifying the commands to do more, see more, and update faster. I learned how to make arrays, the basic decision constructs (I fell in love with case statements), assignment commands, and logical operators.
I was a skinny, athletic but shy kid with a low self image, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I could control something, give it commands, and send it out into the world to print and delete pixels to a screen to make sparkling patterns, and print the words, "Top of the World Ma" (From the old movie, Heat with James Cagney). Coming from a house where color TV's were a luxury, this TRS-80 computer was amazing. When I was done programming, I actually could save my program on a disk, and take it with me. That was even cooler. By the time summer was ending, I was on a first name basis with that TRS-80, I had the lifeguard's phone number, and Lainey (lifeguard) convinced me to join the swim team. By the end of my senior year of HS, I got A's in all of my computer classes, aced Trig (related I guess), and was one of the top swimmers in my state. That Tandy computer had a lot to do with all of that.
Today, I'm reflecting back on a still growing 23 year career in the computer industry. I majored in MIS with CS in college, and aced all of my computer classes, graduating with the highest honors from my college at the UofA. I worked as a programmer/analyst at Digital Equipment Corporation, and then at Intel designing and building software statistical process control systems for the semiconductor industry. After 17 years at Intel, I went full time to the web via MySpace to become a Director of Engineering. Several Director roles later, I'm a Director of Analytics at ValueClick. Analytics was the perfect landing spot for me at this point in my longish career. It combines all of the original fascination and discovery I remember from my early days programming that TRS-80, with my unexplained love for statistics and Trigonometry, marrying with it all of my experience developing SPC systems and databases at Intel. Tandy treated me well, and even though I've owned nearly 20 different computers since, just like your first car, that TRS-80 stole my heart.
- Chris Bridges
'via Blog this'
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