Early Exposure
23 clips
First encounters with computers and programming
How did you first get into computers, technology, or programming?
Filter clips by:
Introduction to FOSSDA
Cat Allman
Eric Allman
Kirk McKusick
Karen Sandler
Joshua Gay
Tony Wasserman
Jon "Maddog" Hall
Lawrence (Larry) Rosen
Tristan Nitot
Deb Goodkin
Heather Meeker
Bruce Perens
Larry Augustin
Roger Dannenberg
Bart Decrem
Personal Mission & Values
Education & Mentorship
Challenges & Growth
Open Source Projects
Community & Collaboration
Evolution of Open Source
Showing 23 clips
0:39
From Pirate Radio to Tech Entrepreneurship
From: Bart Decrem • Moving to the United States and Discovering Silicon Valley
I started volunteering there and I made a little magazine, you know, compiling their Billboard chart...And so that's sort of a through line in my, in my career. It's like an aesthetic and cultural and philosophical political preference, you know.
1:52
Early Exposure to Technology Through Family
From: Cat Allman • Introduction and Childhood Influences
Elisabetta Mori: Can you talk about your childhood? Cat Allman: Sure. I was born in Oakland, in Oakland, California, in 1958, and raised in the East Bay Hills, looking out across San Francisco Bay to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco with my older brother Eric Allman, creator, original creator of Send Mail, the mail transfer agent. Went to public schools, ending up at University of California, Santa Cruz, where I studied American Studies, so not engineering, not computer science. Growing up with an older brother who was a science child prodigy put me on another path for a while, though because of his interests we grew up with like boxes of punch cards, which it turns out if you make a cone out of them and staple them and spray paint them gold, you can make a Christmas wreath out of them...
0:41
Building Models as a Child
From: Deb Goodkin • Early Interest in Building Things
Karen Herman: Did, did you have any interest in computing or computers as a kid? Deb Goodkin: So, um, we didn't have a computer when I was growing up. So that was before home computers. And so I really, the only thing I knew about computers was really the word processors, which were fancy typewriters. And because my dad was also a writer, we had one at home. And so that was pretty novel. And but, but I didn't grow up with computers. So I didn't know anything, I really didn't know anything about them. And, and so it really wasn't until I went to college that I was exposed to computers. So really, before that, I mean, part of my growing up, and maybe because I had brothers too, I built a lot of things, I was really into, like building models, and we would build like, model cars and model airplanes and things like that. So I've always enjoyed that building things.
1:08
Discovering Computer Engineering in College
From: Deb Goodkin • Finding the Path to Technology
Karen Herman: It's interesting, because you said that you really didn't have, you didn't know anything about computers till you got to college. How did you then decide to major in it? Deb Goodkin: Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question. Because when I started college, actually, I was focused more on business, because like I said, before, the plan was really for me to take over my dad's business. But it wasn't something I was really interested in. And my mom actually helped me try to figure out what I was good at. And I grew up thinking, never thinking I was good at math, but my mom would always tell me how she was good at math. I don't even know why it would come up. But I knew that I knew my mom was good at math. And so I realized that I was also very good at math. And so in doing like an assessment test at that time, computer science, and engineering actually came up as a strength. And I thought, you know what, I, this would be a great major, because I could get a job. And so that was really why I went in that direction.
1:47
Introduction to the FreeBSD Foundation
From: Deb Goodkin • Finding Purpose in Open Source
Karen Herman: How did you first, um, you know, hear about the FreeBSD foundation and how did, how were you connected? Deb Goodkin: So, um, the FreeBSD foundation, I didn't know anything about. And, um, so, uh, my friend had contacted me and she said, so she was working at this, um, aerospace company here in Boulder. And, um, so I'm here in Boulder, Colorado. Um, and she said, I, there's a guy at my company. So she worked at an HR and she said, there's this guy in my company. He's running a nonprofit and he's looking for someone to run it. And I told him that I had a friend who is an engineer and looking for some work. And so anyway, so she connected us and that was the first time I had heard of FreeBSD and the FreeBSD foundation. And so, um, so the guy she was talking about was Justin Gibbs, who's the founder of the FreeBSD foundation. He's here in Boulder and he had started the foundation, I think it was about four or five years before that. And I bet he was working full time. And so it was growing to the point where he really couldn't run it. He, and he saw so much potential for growth that he wanted to find someone to run the company.
0:47
Early Exposure to Computing
From: Eric Allman • School Years and Early Interests
Eric Allman: So back in high school, actually in junior high school, there was a teacher, I guess a math teacher at a different school when I was in who decided it would be cool to do an after-school program teaching kids how to program, Fortran to be precise. And I got involved with that and learned Fortran.
0:41
Early Career as a Programmer
From: Heather Meeker • Early Career and Transition to Law
Well, so I actually was a computer programmer in the 1980s. I know that just sounds absolutely ancient now. Doesn't sound ancient to me, but it's all a matter of perspective. And I got into that because there was a lot of demand for people to work in particularly applications programming. When I graduated from college, and I didn't have a degree in computer science, and in fact, most people didn't have degrees in computer science, you couldn't really get a degree in computer science, except for maybe, you know, some schools.
2:16
A Passion for Programming
From: Heather Meeker • Passion for Programming
Zack Ellis: What kept you interested in computer science? Heather Meeker: Computer...like programming is, it's an experience like almost nothing else, like when you are writing a program, you are in total control, right, subject to the rules of the language and the environment you're in, you tell the computer exactly what to do. If the computer doesn't do what you ask it to do, it's your fault. Right. I mean, that's not always true. It's almost always true. So that's like this experience. It's like pure engineering in a way. Like you're not even you're not even really bounded by the physical world in programming. Like it's like being a little megalomaniac, you know, it's like really exciting for that reason. Also, it's one of the most absorbing things I've ever done. Like when I was a coder, I would go to work and I'd get there, you know, at eight in the morning and then at five I would look up and the day would be over. And it was almost as if no time had passed because I was so focused on what I was doing. And I don't think I've ever experienced anything else quite like that. Nothing else I've ever done in my life, either for money or for fun, has has absorbed me that much. And I really loved it for that reason, but also got kind of burnt out on it for that reason. And and I stopped doing it. Not sure whether that was a good idea or a bad idea, but but it was what happened, you know. So that's what I loved about it. It was just you got to solve puzzles however you you know, and you were only really bounded by your ingenuity in doing that. I also thought coding was a very creative activity, and I'm not sure everybody thinks that. But but you have like so much control over how you do things. I just found that fascinating.
0:38
Personal Journey into Open Source
From: Introduction to FOSSDA • Heather Meeker's Personal Journey into Technology
Heather Meeker: Now, it's only fair that I tell my own story and it's certainly not the most interesting story you're going to hear, but I was a computer programmer a long time ago back in the 1980s. It was so long ago, we called ourselves computer programmers instead of software engineers. I wrote code in compiled Basic. Now, for people who are in the tech industry, that is, you know, a very lightweight way of doing computer programming, but hey, you can't judge, because it actually worked really well for what we were doing at the time.
3:10
Early Influences and the Path to Technology
From: Jon "Maddog" Hall • Early Life and Influences
Maddog: My father was a good influence on me because he was very interested in mechanical things and machinery... I particularly liked the Popular Electronics magazines...
2:39
First Steps in Computer Programming
From: Jon "Maddog" Hall • Aetna Life and Casualty: Mainframes and Early Software Development
Maddog: ...I said, sure, I'll take the course and I would read the book at night and then I would go in and practice at night and on the weekends programming this IBM 1130...
3:11
First Exposure to Programming: TI-82 Calculators and Fractals
From: Joshua Gay • Early Interests: Poetry and Programming
Joshua Gay: In the first moment, I kind of got intrigued by computer science. There's TI-82 calculators, what we used or what I had for school. And a friend of mine who was also one of the first people I knew to run Linux back in the 90s, he introduced me to the world of programming on a calculator in high school.
1:49
Discovery of Free and Open Source Software
From: Joshua Gay • First Industry Experience
It was around that time. I think I had heard people talk about things like Red Hat Linux and free software. But it wasn't until I really started to look into it for the job I was working at Super Wings...
3:52
Early Influences from Parent's Engineering and Teaching Careers
From: Karen Sandler • Introduction and Early Childhood
Karen Sandler: Sure. I grew up in the suburbs in the United States. Um, my parents had grown up very poor... And so, uh, he was quite technical, and he was one of the first people using, uh, computer code in order to, like, using computers to replace the, um, the manual, um, crunching of numbers...
3:40
First Experience Writing Code
From: Karen Sandler • Introduction and Early Childhood
Karen Sandler: ...I think I wrote my first really, really, really, really silly program when I was probably six years old, you know, or 5 or 6 years old...
1:22
Early Exposure to Computers and Technology
From: Kirk McKusick • Introduction and Background
Kirk McKusick: Well, math and science classes were clearly my strong suit in school and the ones that I enjoyed the most. And I had just a little bit of stuff with computers because there was nothing in my high school at that time that involved computers. But I had an opportunity to do some other stuff at the University of Delaware where I'd gotten a little bit of introduction to computers.
0:57
Early Exposure to Electronics and Tinkering
From: Larry Augustin • Early Academic and Professional Experiences
I was also lucky in that Dayton, Ohio, is home to something called the Ham Fest, which I don't know if a lot of people know, but it is a gathering of ham radio operators that happens every year. But beyond that sort of just ham radio operators, it's really about people who tinker with electronics. And so I was lucky to have this exposure early on that this interesting thing was happening and I wanted to learn. And so I was a kid who always was experimenting with sort of basic electronics. I had the little kits as a kid where you would build the radio from scratch or you would wire together a little electronic circuits. And I was always kind of tinkering or doing or building something like that.
2:13
Early Programming Experiences with Punch Cards
From: Larry Augustin • Advanced Education and Early Career
There was one thing in my high school that was interesting. There was a course I took as I began to try and understand electronics and computers, but more a course at this time. And gosh, you look back and you realize how far the world has come. That my first sort of exposure to doing anything with programming was punched cards with cobalt. And as a high school student, I was able to take a course where we didn't even have a punch card machine. We had these big coding forms, big ledger sheets of paper, 11 by 17 pieces of paper with lines on them. And there were 80 columns on a punch card. And you literally wrote in clean print across these sheets of paper. And we would send them in. So I'd have to write my program out by hand on a piece of paper. You'd send it in. People would punch those into the punch card machines. You would get back decks of cards. And then you sorted the cards into a program. And then you sent the cards in to run. So we think today about fast turn and programming and developing code. The productivity in that sense of lines of code was pretty low. It was, you know, you spent a day writing forms. You sent it in. You got punched cards back. I mean, it took a week to turn around. And if you made one change, a comma in a different place, one different line, it was a week to make a minor change. So you had to get that right. You had to make sure that was sort of perfect when it went in because the turnaround was very slow.
0:53
Bell Labs Opportunity
From: Larry Augustin • Advanced Education and Early Career
They would recruit kids right out of their undergraduate, they would bring them in, they'd give them an opportunity to work for a year, and then they would send them off to school to get their master's, get advanced degrees. Fabulous, fabulous program. I was lucky enough to get accepted into that. And I went from South Bend, Indiana, Notre Dame, to Holmdel, New Jersey, the home of the transistor, and Bell Labs, the place where the Big Bang was discovered.
1:30
Early Exposure to Computing at Dartmouth
From: Lawrence (Larry) Rosen • Childhood and Education
I studied computer science before there was a computer science department. Uh, I became a devotee of that. I played with the computers that they made available to all of us. They had computers in the student rooms...
0:39
Origins of Audacity
From: Roger Dannenberg • Origins of Audacity
Roger Dannenberg: Well, the project started basically from research needs that we have that we were working on actually on query by humming, which was getting computers to recognize tunes that people might sing or hum and search a database for them and part of that is just recognizing pitch and tunes and we were working on some algorithms to improve that. And of course algorithms fail and then when they fail, you want to see what happened and we were trying to visualize audio and the analyses that we did and figure out what was going wrong and we just felt like it would be really great to have a tool that could help us display audio data in different formats and deal with different audio files.
2:09
Early Computing Experience at University
From: Tony Wasserman • Early Academic Pursuits
Tony Wasserman: So I went to Cal, University of California, Berkeley... the first computing course as a junior at Cal. And it was very quickly obvious to me that I was much better at programming and computing than I was at math or physics. And so having gone through Berkeley, I then went to graduate school at University of Wisconsin, Madison.
1:47
Early Exposure to Computers: The TRS-80
From: Tristan Nitot • Introduction and Early Interest in Computing
Tristan Nitot: ...for some reason, a friend of my parents' bought a TRS-80...and thought 'oh, the young Tristan may be interested in this new thing'. And so, he was going on vacation for two weeks and so, before going to vacation, he dropped it at the house...and for 15 days in a row, I was stuck in front of it. You know, opening the manual page 1 and starting to read...