In 1981, my father brought home a Apple II+. Part holiday present for the family, part tool for his business, he quickly became fascinated with the machine…. and so did I. I did what I could to learn everything about this new magical machine, following him to User’s Group conventions and whatnot, and after receiving a book on Applesoft BASIC for my birthday, I set out learning how to program.
By the time I had entered the eighth grade, the Texas Board of Education had added a “Computer Literacy” requirement to the curriculum for that grade. Lucky for me, my school used an Apple IIe for the course, and having the luxury of having had more experience with machine than most adults, much less my peers, my wonderful teacher, Coach Paul Thornton, who also taught my honors algebra class, allowed me to help out with teaching the class.
While most of my peers were programming hangman for their final project, I programmed a version of the popular video game, “Break Out”, and even brought in my joy stick from home to demonstrate. Later that year, as a reward, Coach took myself and two of my schoolmates to Memorial High School’s Fourth Annual Junior High Computer Programming Competition where we placed 2nd out of teams across the entire Houston metropolitan area.