Surprises

The web was a real surprise for me.

 

I've been into computers since Grade 4, when my mom bought me an Apple IIc. Those were beautiful computers -- the keyboard has the same light touch as today's Macs. Anyway, programming Basic on that thing was a heck of a lot of fun. My goal was always to create some complex video game -- either a racing game a la Pole Position, or a Wolfenstein-like 3D game.

 

And then for me came BBS's. For you youngin's, BBS's were a precursor to the web (though definitely not as cool). You would dial one up with your modem and choose files to download. It basically gave you a list of files, together with descriptions of each file. How many nights I stayed up late searching for the very best freeware.

 

Funnily enough, all that effort came to nothing in the end because along came more powerful computers and the www. The freeware that I so diligently searched for, freeware to last a lifetime, quickly became unnecessary, or paled in comparison to today's open source software (Inkscape -- you gotta try it). How quickly things change. It's not worth striving for perfection in one environment, because the environment changes every 5 years.