My Geek Origin Story

Michael Kordahi, aka Delicate Genius, is asking for Geek Origin Stories.

How can I not contribute to this worthy cause……

The year  was 1981, and my high school, CBC StKilda,  got a fancy new Cromenco computer system. I was asked to man the computer lab by my math teacher, Mrs Fagin, and to pass the time, I wrote programs in Structured Basic.

I remember putting in programs that would  to print out ASCII art – playboy bunny logo and Alfred E. Newman stick in my memory.  After spending time playing in that lab, I decided to following a computing path, even though I had been planning to go on and do medicine. 

I signed up for the EDP (or Electronic Data Processing) course at CIT in 1982. In my first year we used punch cards to input out programs. I still have some those punch cards someone in the garage – I’ve carried them for almost 30 years!  In my second year, the class had access to time sharing terminals connected to a PR1ME computer and we worked on PR1ME Information (which was similar to PICK), as well as COBOL and FORTRAN, and in my third year, we had a dedicated Data General system,  we programmed in COBOL and PL/1 and we had access to a new fangled a IBM PC and a software package called KnowledgeMan for our group project.

After graduating, I entered the workforce as a humble programmer and my first job was converting FORTRAN applications for an engineering company on St Kilda Rd, who were migrating systems. That was the start of many projects during my time

So there you have it….