Snopes on Ken Olsen

From: Michael Sokolov <msokolov_at_ivan.Harhan.ORG>
Date: Tue Sep 21 22:24:42 2004

Vintage Computer Festival <vcf_at_siconic.com> wrote:

> A big reason for the techies and nerds was so they could do
> programming without being constrained by time limits. And what did they
> programs? GAMES!

Well, to give just one data point, not me: when I first learned how to
program at the age of 7, in PDP-11 assembly on my first home computer,
Soviet BK0010, I did NOT write any games. My first program, although
it was not on the BK0010 but on its successor, BK0011, was an operating
system. So I guess I was destined from the very beginning to be an OS
guy. (What am I doing now, 18 years later? Maintaining 4.3BSD-Quasijarus,
an operating system. And it's for VAX, which is not that far away from
PDP-11, my first instruction set.)

MS
Received on Tue Sep 21 2004 - 22:24:42 BST