Past:

My first attempt at programming was to implement a square root function using successive approximations on one of the early Texas Instruments programmable calculators. That was probably around 1971.

My first real programming language was Algol 68 in 1978 at Liverpool University. I've been looking for something that even remotely compares with it ever since and haven't found anything that comes even close. My ONLY criticism of it was that you couldnt define operators other than the existing +,-,*,/ etc ones.

The Commodore PET kept me entertained for a time. We had a Shoe-Box sized external hard drive for development with 1Mb of storage on it. Oh the wonders of a CPU which couldnt increment the accumulator!

I remember the 4.77Mhz IBM PC dual floppy with a little fondness. It was only marginally better than the Commodore PET. It even had a B: drive! I was programming that in BCPL, another cool language. This implementation had optimisations that beat the socks off most modern compilers.

Present:

Although I find C a sometimes cryptic and unforgiving language I am beginning to warm to it. Fifteen years working with it has laid tracks in my brain that will probably never go away.

I have recently been given the questionable honor of being Page-Editor of the C page. If you have any constructive comments, please e-mail me at PaulCaswell 'at' experts-exchange 'dot' com. All help will be welcome and treated in the strictest confidence.

Some shareware (well, actually just one right now but there will be more) at:

http://uk.geocities.com/xshareware/

Future:

When I can override ANY piece of system functionaly with just a few lines of code I will finally begin to believe that this industry has come-of-age. I have seen its birth, its infancy, and a long and often depressing puberty. Lets all strive for unity on this one.

Paul