confession

(updated 6:40 a.m.)

I think it's about time to make a confession, to divulge a secret I have long been hiding, to unburden myself of an old skeleton in the closet. My secret is this:

I used to be a COBOL programmer.

Yes, it's true. I can hear the gasps of horror now as you all avert your eyes in embarrassment. But I swear, I had no choice! After graduating from the University of Toronto, I worked as a programmer/analyst for the Toronto Dominion Bank, working on the interface the human tellers used. I programmed in COBOL for two years. What an unbelieveably archaic language.

Years later, I was told that I could have made money modifying Cobol code doing Y2K stuff, but I valued my sanity too much.

To all you computer types out there: What was your first computer language? Which language did you like the most? Which did you hate the most? Here's an interesting diagram of the history of computer languages (I believe there's also one in the current issue of Wired magazine).

Languages I have programmed in include: Basic, Snobol, Fortran, COBOL, APL, PL/I, C, Lisp, Prolog and Pascal. I hated COBOL the most. I found APL to be the most bizarre; it was one of the only languages where it's entirely possible for a programmer to be unable to decipher his or her 4-line program written only minutes before. My favourite was Lisp (hey, I love parentheses!). My favourite computer courses in university: CSC149F, the first undergraduate computer class at the UofT to use computer terminals instead of keypunch machines, I believe. And a 4th year/grad course in Artificial Intelligence taught by Professor Tsotsos, who was one of my favourite profs at the University of Toronto. I remember there were only four women in the class. Hey, I just did a Google search for his name and found out that Professor Tsotsos is now teaching at York University.

My very first language was Basic. My first computer was a TRS-80 Model I (for a few weeks until our Model III was shipped). I used to save my programs on cassette tape until the Model III arrived. My brother Jim and I used to take turns reading Basic code aloud from a computer games magazine while the other person typed it in.

My first computer programming job was writing JCL (Job Control Language) one summer for Environment Canada, fulfilling requests for weather history reports in different areas of Canada.

The first computer game I ever played was Eliza, on the machines at the University of Waterloo during a Computer Day trip when I was in high school. I also discovered Crowther & Woods' Colossal Cave back then (remember those "small twisty passages, all alike"?).

I remember Pong, Pacman, Robotron (my friend John Chew had a special glove for when he played this game), Defender, Scott Adams adventures. The first computer game I ever played on the machine at school was some kind of Star Trek game where the "display" was printed out in ascii characters on DEC-10 teletype machines (I think they were called DEC-10s? Reid and Luisa, do you remember??). My friend Michelle got me hooked on Rogue, a little ascii game which I now have on my Palm.

I remember buying my first modem with John at an Arkon (I think the computer store was called Arkon) at the Yorkdale shopping mall; it was a Hayes 300 baud, and we tested our modems out on each other when we got to our respective homes. I remember how THRILLED I was to see John typing at me for the first time.

Geez, I feel old. :-)

So 'fess up, you technonerdgirls and technonerdboys out there. What secrets are you hiding?

Make your confession here.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Me examining Krispy Kremes at Andy's and Christine's party. They were okay, about the same as doughnuts from Tim Hortons. But again, these weren't fresh from the oven. Still looking forward to trying that out in California.
	I think this photo was taken in 1982. The computer on the left is a PET that my dad used to bring home from school (he was a schoolteacher). The one on the right is our TRS-80 Model III. I used to host a BBS called the Bricmef on it; the software was programmed and maintained remotely by technonerdboy friends of mine. I "met" Jeff through this BBS, six months before meeting him in person.