Me in the winter of 1979, halfway through my sophomore year of high school. I’m taking a sheet-rocking class and can’t stop coughing and sneezing.

What can I transfer to?

Well we have this new class about computers?

I dunno what the fuck that means but I can’t keep sheetrocking.

I walk into a room full of DecWriters and teletypes.

To connect to the computer you dial this phone number when you hear this weird noise you push the phone into these rubber cups.

You talk to that computer using this thing called BASIC. You can actually get the computer to do things!

I remember my first guess a number program, and printing it out to show my dad. He didn’t understand it but thought it was cool I did.

45 years later I’m still making computers do things through code. All thanks to BASIC.