Childhood Computing

I recently stumbled upon a nice blog post titled Childhood Computing. It made me think about my own childhood computing experience. I am much older than the author of the aforementioned post but like them, I love computers too. I have for most of my life. When I was about eight years old, my parents decided to transfer me to a new school because of its curriculum. They did not know it then, and it probably did not even matter to them, but this new school had a computer lab. That was quite remarkable for its time. I grew up in a very tiny industrial town. The computers in the lab were hand-me-downs from the silica factory around which the town was built. We got only about two hours of time per month in the computer lab but the little time I got there opened up a whole new world for me. Before entering the lab, we had to leave our shoes at the door. 'These are expensive machines. We must keep them free of dust', our teacher would say. It was a ritual. The computers were very old IBM PC…