The first memory about computer is that I was jealous of my friends in different universities or different majors starting learning programming. The first time I physically touched a computer was in a friend’s lab. The computer probably was an apple. It can run BASIC. So I tried to write some code to make it respond with a simple greeting. It was before the new year of 1988.

Then in 1988, we had a course of FORTRAN. Later we started using FORTRAN in computation of aerodynamics etc. Because I had no formal training in computer science, I hardly knew anything other than FORTRAN and basic operation. First, I got the chance to try out FORTRAN assignments in the university’s computation center. It was located at the southwest corner of the campus, beside the auditorium. It was the rare building that was air-conditioned at that time. The computer room had the nice floor that could hide the wire under it. The computer is PDP-11. According to what I could find out now, the OS must by some flavor of UNIX. There are many terminal in the room big enough to hold the entire – or just half of the class – I couldn’t remember that much. The terminal was those with green text only. Today’s programmers may have seen those things only in the movie. The time slot we had is probably one or two hours each week. To make the best use of the time slot, I would write the code on paper first, modify and copy (by hand) many times to make it as good as I could. Somehow I still have time to play games on it. I remember two of them. One is like SimCity: you rule a virtual city (or is it kingdom?), deciding how much to spend to farm, how much for building up military, etc. After a year is over, you could see the outcome and decide how to develop the city or just make it survive. The other game is to control different parameters to land some spacecraft safely on the destination planet. It may be called “plane” from what I can google now. In all the games, all the operation is to type in some commands and numbers.

From later 1988 until into 1989, I also started to use PC. The OS is DOS of course. The main purpose is still to program in FORTRAN. One of the editor I used is called edline. Games on PC became much more interesting – at least much more colorful. My favorite is a game that I thought is modern pentathlon. After I checked the terminology, I found I didn’t get the name right. It is more like heptathlon. I remember it included high jump, running, and javelin throw etc. You really need to be physically fast to win the game. Later there is a popular game disk. The games on it were called 1, 2, 3, etc, including PAC man, a bird jumping a pile of locks, shooting helicopter, frog crossing the street and rive, and most popularly, digger. Also around that time, we started to have software to handle Chinese characters on PC. It was so cool to print out those Chinese characters. The printer I used with PC is Brother.

When the co-processor was installed on PC to enhance float point number performance, we were very excited to see the machine run much faster.

From 1989 to 1992, I went to graduate school at the same university. The PC was getting better and better. First Windows came in. Mouse entered our life later. All the games were taken over by the ultimate game – Tetris.

During that time I still went to computation center if I really needed faster experiments. The new computation center on the west campus is at the south end of the campus. It is still rare to have air-conditioned building at that time. The feeling of stream every time I walked out the computation center is still very fresh in my mind. The time slot was now paid by the my advisor’s fund. The machine is VAX as I could remember. The OS was VAX/VMS. It was in that computer room when I first saw a mouse. I was puzzled by what that may be. I wish I had not throw those users’ manuals for the VAX system and the earlier PDP-11 machine.

When I started to work in a different university in 1992, we had a Sun workstation. The OS is UNIX version something release something. Later we also bought a few SGI workstations. The OS is then IRIX. By 1996, the Internet started to be connected on the campus. At the very beginning time, there was one shared email address for the public of the entire university. Then I came to US and started using PC most time. VAX was also used by the university at that time. When I switched to computer science in 1999, I started to play with UNIX again. At least Solaris and Linux. No sure if I touched other flavors as well.