A Little History

So how did I go from Unskilled Geek to polymath?

Coin-op video game freak extraordinaire - Space Invaders, Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Joust. You name it. But that doesn't teach much but eye-hand coordination and how to avoid your responsibilities.

1982 - The Texas Instruments TI-99/4A came out. For about $100 I could buy a "real" computer. Had to hook it up to your TV for a monitor; saved your code on an audio diskette tape; oh yeah - the largest program it could hold in RAM was 16k - yeah, K.

Used TI Basic - bought the "Extended Basic" plug-in module and was able to program SPRITES!

Started with "Hello, World" and a year later finished and copyrighted a sports game that was the EARLY predecessor to the program I started selling last year.

Boy Genius? Not hardly. Learned a little, learned a little more, painstakingly trial and errored. Finally got it where I wanted it. You can do a lot with 16k if that's all you have.

Then life got busy - had 3 kids by then, and a demanding job.

Didn't touch technology (except as a user, of course - I AM a Geek) for 17 years. In 2000 something - can't remember what - brought my attention to Visual Basic. I was in a new job and away from home a LOT. Decided, what the heck, I'll buy VB6 and see if its anything like what I programmed with for the TI-99/4A.

Well it was, and it wasn't.

I mean, it was visual - that was good. Easy to create user interfaces and all. But the language was SO MUCH more complex.

So I read some and tried some - back to "Hello, World" again...

Decided to write a little program to help people decide whether to get a fixed-rate mortgage or an adjustable. You know - asked the user a series of questions about their needs, had some formulas built in there to add weighting to their answers, and spit out a recommendation. Didn't really use it for anything, but I could say "look what I created".

That was a big deal for me. I could create something useable with VB6.

I've always been pretty creative - decently, not exceptionally. But I had discovered that anything I can think up, I can program. Another big deal.

So with a little time on my hands I decided the best way to learn was to start on a most ambitious undertaking - to create a piece of software that would require lots of intricate programming, fast code, tons of graphics and sound - and then sell it.

Stay tuned for how I started a 5 year programming effort with a successful conclusion...