Age

From: Dwight K. Elvey <dwight.elvey_at_amd.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 13:18:17 +0000

Hi
 Born in the year of the transistor.
My first programming experiences were 6800 and 8080 machine
code. I then went on to use PLM-80, a little PASCAL and BASIC.
My first computer was a Poly-88 that I bought used for $400.
I was one of the ones that went to the West Coast Computer
Fair to buy my first floppy drive. While there, I picked
up a listing of Forth. Up to that time, writing large programs
was a mystery to me. How was it that one could use something
like BASIC to actually do something significant. Forth taught
me how to factor problems and because of its natural flow
to create significant programs on the fly.
 For a long time, I tried to convince people how right Forth
was compared to other languages. I've since come to realize
that people all think differently. Some like the comfort of
natural languages ( BASIC ) while others like the compactness
of programs ( APL ). Some feel that millions can't be wrong ( C ),
while others like to explore the abstract ( SmallTalk ).
 I just like to get working programs as quick as I can so I
can fiddle some more with the hardware. Each to their own.
Dwight
Received on Mon Feb 28 2005 - 13:18:15 GMT