Catching the Software Bug: My First Taste of Programming

I wrote my first computer program in the summer of 1971, during a one-week course at the University of Missouri at Columbia. I was between my junior and senior years of high school, and it was my first experience with the mysterious world of computing. We learned FORTRAN WATFOR, punching commands onto stacks of IBM cards and feeding them into an IBM 360 mainframe.

The process was mesmerizing. Our job priority on the system was so high that we could feed our stack of cards into the reader, stroll into the printer room, and watch our program's output emerge almost immediately. That immediate feedback was exhilarating—computers were amazing, and making them work felt like unlocking some kind of magic.

That summer, I was fortunate to have extended access to the system. On my own time, I developed a simple program—nothing groundbreaking, but it lit a fire in me. The thrill of creating something functional, even on such a basic level, left a lasting impression.

Fast forward a couple of years, and I found myself at the University of Missouri at Rolla, punching those same cards and running FORTRAN programs on a similar mainframe. The excitement, however, was tempered by reality. Job priorities were lower; you’d submit your deck of cards and wait—sometimes a day or more—to see if your program had run successfully or crashed in a storm of syntax errors.

By my second semester, I had caught up on what I’d learned that summer and realized I wasn’t gaining much more. I turned in every program on time, they all worked, but my interest waned. Midway through the term, I quit attending class entirely, telling myself it wasn’t worth the effort.

Looking back, I see that was a mistake. Completing the course would have been an easy A—a rarity in my academic record—and I could have used the boost. But at the time, I was restless, my life was heading in a new direction, albeit a not so fruitful path.

Though I didn’t pursue programming again immediately, that early exposure planted a seed. Years later, I found my way back to software development, and that initial excitement I felt in front of the IBM 360 never truly left me. Accept now it was an Atari 800, and a 13" color television as a monitor.

Sometimes, it takes a while to find your path, but those early sparks of curiosity and passion have a way of guiding you—even if you don’t see it at first.