Great stories, thanks ... which reminds me of my other favourite line from that text:
"When it comes time to fix a program like this, no manager would even think of
sending anything less than a Real Programmer to do the job -- no Quiche
Eating structured programmer would even know where to start. This is
called 'job security'."
Me, I started in my bedroom when I was a kid on a TR(a)S(h)-80, learned assembler for DEC-10s and PDP-11s as well as PASCAL and FORTRAN (natch) at university, RTL/2 at my first proper job. Finally, like everybody else, taught myself C and never looked back. I am now a confirmed quiche-eater and find myself wondering however people managed to produce anything useful back then, moon-landings notwithstanding. Then again, if the height of modern technological development is Twitter and Facebook, then maybe there's something to be said for the old ways
.