My first awareness of microcomputers was circa 1981-1983 when I saw students working on an Apple computer with a cassette tape loading various programs. In 1983, in High School in New York City, appeared the same machine, with a floppy disk system. That’s where the fascination began, and I started with BASIC programming.
In the same High School (1984-1985), the school integrated what looked like a central server with terminals attached (just looked it up, and it was the: Informex Wicat Multi-User System 150). It was used for Business Math class, and also included a typing tutor program, which is where I learned to touch-type). A side-benefit was that the room required consistent air-conditioning, which was a welcome respite from the heat/humidity outside of NYC.
Next stop was undergraduate at Fordham University in the Bronx in Fall of 1985. While not initially thinking of computer science as a major, I found in Dealy Hall several rooms with VT100 terminals. These were connected to an array of Servers (DEC VAX-11/785 and DEC PDP-11). Additional models like the DEC VAX-8700 arrived the following year. The server names were named after the Mary Tyler Moore Show characters (eg. Murray, Mary, Lars, etc).
The university also had an Academic Microcomputer Lab which initially housed Commodore 64, and then transitioned to IBM PC and some Samna systems.
After taking Intro to Computers, using the DEC VAX-785 (Murray) minicomputer, with its VMS Operating System, and learning DCL (Digital Command Language) and BASIC Programming, I became a student worker (Computer Lab Assistant), with a cast of other fellow student characters. I think Unix was only available on a specific MicroVax, which I didn’t have access to, so I had to wait until Linux came out before I started seeing what Unix looked like.
I remember an early conversation around 1986 with one of the Systems Programmers who said, “Learn Unix and C programming. Also, TCP/IP is going to be a really big deal soon”. His foresight was right on. At that time, Fordham’s domain names were FordMURH.edu and FordMULC.edu and required a frequent manual uploading of all systems for lists of all systems and networks, worldwide. Soon after, it standardized with fordham.edu. That was also the time it was fun to connect with other universities world-wide, and the world became a smaller place. Various BBS boards; listservs to join and learn from.
The same systems programmer taught “Introduction to C Programming” in the summer of 1986, I think, which was an introduction to a high level programming language, when compiled, that was closest to actual machine language. You could really create small sized code to do exactly what you wanted. I understood that C is what Unix is written in, which explains why I still have the First Edition of Kernigan and Ritchie’s book on my shelf. Somehow, I had a hard time getting it, but it’s likely because I wasn’t being really patient with understanding the fundamentals. On the same systems, across various courses, I learned (or was introduced to): Pascal, Fortran, COBOL, and Assembly Language. Assembly was quite something, and I lucked out, because I was roommates with the Lincoln Center Systems Programmer who was uber-smart on all this stuff, and able to get my code working. Tons of green bar printouts were reviewed over the years.
On the Microcomputer side, we had Turbo C and Turbo Pascal. Never got into Prolog. I had a Mac SE-20 (20MB hard-drive) and had a C compiler, but again, didn’t have the full interest or time to get into learning C.
I’m really good at hoarding computer books, so I still have Herb Schildt’s “Teach Yourself C”, which the label says I purchased in 1989. That’s going to be a good book to go through. I also have the K&R book and other C related books. I think I knew that learning C would be a useful skill to have, and just needed to resolve when. I also believe that learning a programming language is a good brain exercise in many ways (problem solving; patience; logic; reasoning, etc).
Skipping ahead to now (October 2026), I’m making some headways with Raspberry Pi installs, which are fun to work with. Initial idea is to go through some electronic packages like www.craftingtable.com which include breadboards and resistors, and sensors, and basically make something work, over just programming stuff on the screen. Early stages, but the system up and working. Also, a good way of learning electronics.
In hindsight, it’s somewhat surreal that on my desk, I now have access to a Raspberry Pi 5 16GB (Debian Linux) board (with keyboard, monitor, mouse and 128GB SD card!) and am using SSH to connect to a WiFi connected Raspberry Pi 3B+ 1GB system (with a 32GB SD Card!), where I’m now learning CLI by going through www.linuxcommands.com books. The capacity and the ability to do stuff now, including realtime web searches for answers to things (with AI) is beyond what I could imagine going back to the early days of seeking out air-conditioned rooms.
Many projects to dabble with: command line Linux; C Programming; Python Programming; Electronics Projects towards basic robotics and towards AI systems; my own Weather Station (using WeeWx). What’s great is that learning one thing, somehow assists something else at some point.
As relates to Linux, I now see the path:
Unix
Bourne SH (Shell)
GNU Project (where GNU is recursive of “GNU is not Unix”)
BASH (Bourne again Shell), which is what I have, I think
Linux (Linus Torvalds)
Ubuntu (which I’ve installed in the past on various laptops, but ended up just using as a GUI desktop for web searches).
I think I now have a: Debian GNU/Linux system that is used by Raspberry Pi.
That’s my short-story of going down a memory lane from early 80’s thru 2026. Wow, that’s more than 40 year span! Just learned some commands: date, uptime, df, free