How I started programming
Hearing how people got into tech is fascinating to me, especially women. (Check out http://ilearnedtoprogram.com) Not that men’s stories are not interesting. It’s that women’s stories tend to have a lot of variability to them. From the age to the role model to the reasons. Here’s my story.
I started programming at the ripe old age of 6. In today’s world that sounds somewhat young, although not very unbelievable considering 18 month year olds know how to play with iPhones and download apps. However, my first encounter with computers was in the early 80’s which was probably not very common for that time.
My parents had their hands full with me. I was a very curious child. I had a knack for taking things apart because I either wanted to understand how they worked or I just didn’t like how they were put together. This meant there was a slew of disassembled toys in my house when I was very young. I remember that Radio Shack was one of my favorite toy stores growing up. Now one might say, Radio Shack, a toy store? Huh? Isn’t it an electronics store? Yes! I loved how it had all the cool robots and gadgets, and they sold battery chargers, which was essential since it seemed like everything I liked playing with needed batteries. I do not remember what the occasion was but one day my mother got me this little bitty keyboard and a companion book which said something with “Basic” on it.
The little keyboard.
The keyboard was tiny. Not like my parent’s manual typewriter. My little fingers fit perfectly on it. I started reading the manual, a habit I have never lost over time, and connected the keyboard to a TV. Next I went into the companion book and liked the animated pictures of a computer character. Picture Sponge Bob Square Pants, but a computer not a sponge. I followed the directions and typed in what looked like sentences which all started with a number. Within a few minutes and a few lines, I was able to get the screen to print something back at me. I can only imagine the A-HA moment I must have had. “Hmm, type a few lines and the computer talks back to me!” I was hooked as I followed my computer buddy in the book and kept doing more and more interactive programs. Soon enough the computer was asking me what my name was and then asking me how I was and addressing me by name. I’d made a new friend! I think my most impressive program was when I got the computer to make different sounds. I think I begged my parents to buy me a special cable to make that happen.
Ok, so let’s dive into the learning environment a bit more. Remember, I’m 6. I do not know how to type well. I read probably 2 grades higher than normal. I was bilingual so I could read and write in two languages. I had a very short attention span. Especially with the pace of my curious mind I got, still get, bored very easily. I did not have anyone helping me because my father was a microbiologist and more of a hippie not a techie. My mother still has no clue what I studied in school or do for a living. She just knows it has to do with computers. The only encouragement I had was from my guy cousins in Costa Rica who would send me note paper lined with numbered lines. I did not know what the programs did so I didn’t pay much attention to what they would send me.
Interesting, why did I pay attention to my book so much then? To answer let’s look at the technology I was working with. You can look at the technical specs of the Tandy TRS-80 MC 10 here, but from my point of view this was a “mess up once and start over again” toy. Basic is an interpretive language meaning, as you write a line it gets processed. There is no compiling as in write it first then process and find mistakes or run. Hence if I was writing and realized I messed up a few lines back there was no editor to go fix it, I had to start over. Moreover, this system only had 4kB of on-board memory and no persistent memory. Every time I turned it off or hit the reset button all my work would be wiped out only to start over again from scratch. Believe me that red reset button got worn from how much it got pressed.
Given these horrible circumstances why would a child get so enamored with this toy? Back to the book. Remember it was “Computer Bob, Rectangle Keyboard” who was leading me through the exercises. He would show me what to type and then show the outcome. It was almost like a comic strip. Exercises were broken down in a way that they built on top of each other. I could skip around the book and find comics… I mean exercises that interested me. I messed up a lot and pressed that red reset button. Impatiently I would wait for the command prompt to come back up and then start furiously typing again. So why did my cousin’s list of numbered lines not interest me? You can figure it out.
I wish I could say that was the start of a brilliant career where I started my own company by 9 and was on TIME magazine by 10. Ten years later in high school in my computer science class, we were learning to program in a language called Basic. It all seemed so familiar to me and that’s when I realized, “Wait! That book said ‘Basic’ on it and had the same funny lines that started with a number. Was I programming at 6?”
The original book
Originally published at www.jenniferarguello.com on April 17, 2012.
