OLDER crowd (20+)? WTF?

[tekboi]

wow, when do you graduate?





j/k!

lol, I read it that way to the first time. Comma's are important!

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I'm 25. I remember those Big Floppy Discs and having a 2gb hard drive. When I was in high school they JUST started requiring students to take keyboarding classes. And polyphonic ringtones were a BIG DEAL at the time. The Motorola RAZR was the top of the line phone when I graduated high school.

 

[Jessica Lares]

I'm 24, and computers were actually a HUGE part of my education (and I've been in school since I was 4, so now I have like no life other than education, LOL).

My dad used to bring home computers they would throw out at the schools he worked at. These varied from an Apple machine, some MS DOS ones, some PC DOS, some with Windows 3.1. I learnt how to draw, write, and read on them. So that was the beginning.

We had a MS-DOS machine to play games in my two years before K, and then in Kindergarten we had one that sat in a corner of the room which was also DOS based. But by then, they were making us use this program, I can't remember what it was called, but it also ran on DOS, and it was basically reading/math comprehension where we had to read problems and answer them with multiple choice. They had pretty pictures which made it more interesting, haha. We had to go in and do this for a hour every week.

And then in third grade we started to take typing, which was the entire basis of the computer education (with some Edmark/The Learning Company getting mixed in) until I went off to middle school. I used to go into the lab at my dad's work (only at one school now) and also use the educational software they had there.

In 6th grade we learnt to do a 20 page power point presentation, and use some brainstorming software. They had a silent printer at that school, it was pretty creepy! We didn't go into the lab except for special projects though.

High school computer education went back to basics. It was just a one year class, and we also did power point, and we did more boring stuff like keeping a diary, but we also used Publisher. I had been using Photoshop in Photography class for two years at that point. By the end of my Freshman year I was learning InDesign for journalism/yearbook class.

But funny enough I find computer science completely boring in general. So I've been in college since I graduated working with Pro Tools and Autodesk Maya. I don't intend to get a degree or anything though. I'm just doing it purely for enjoyment and to make being creative much easier and robust.

 

[elistan]

Nothing like bringing a thread back from a 5 year old death. Way to stay current boys.

Some MR posters create accounts for the strangest first posts. Usually in long dormant threads. I don't get it.

Anyway, my first computer experience was the original Pong game. Then an Atari 2600. Then my dad purchased an IBM PC. At school, I did some BASIC programming on an Apple II, then played around with an original 128k Mac. There was something clean and elegant about that 384x256 black on white high res display that wasn't present in a 16 color 320x200 CGA display. My favorite was making drawings in MacPaint. Friends had stuff like C64 and TI-99. Then an AST with an 80286, PASCAL programming in high school, a 486DX-50 for college, C/C++, yadda yadda.

 

[AFDoc]

Some MR posters create accounts for the strangest first posts. Usually in long dormant threads. I don't get it.

Anyway, my first computer experience was the original Pong game. Then an Atari 2600. Then my dad purchased an IBM PC. At school, I did some BASIC programming on an Apple II, then played around with an original 128k Mac. There was something clean and elegant about that 384x256 black on white high res display that wasn't present in a 16 color 320x200 CGA display. My favorite was making drawings in MacPaint. Friends had stuff like C64 and TI-99. Then an AST with an 80286, PASCAL programming in high school, a 486DX-50 for college, C/C++, yadda yadda.

O pong was bad ass! We then had a C64 and Ti99 ect ect. Seems like that was the progression lol. My first console was the Intellivision, which kicked atari's ass big time lol.

 

[JBazz]

I'm 48. There were no computers in high school. I took typing as an elective, but learned bad habits I am still trying to break. My typing teacher taught me to use the lower case "L" for number "1" and upper case "O" for zero. Needless to say, those didnt translate to computers.

Oh, and I think my short hand I learned is probably obsolete.

 

[Sedrick]

56

Seems mostly 20s and 30s here.

None of that computer stuff when I went to school. Took typing class in school on the old manual typewriters and owned a 'Brother' or two later on. God, trying to get through an entire page without making a mistake!

I latched on to computers when they did come out however. Went through Basic, Qbasic and even VBasic (Dos version of Visual basic that lasted about 30 minutes) before moving onto 'Windows' and Visual Basic/C++. Anyone remember GEO Works? (DOS program launcher to compete with the new kid on the block, Windows). Power Menu was the greatest along with X Tree.

I'm a technical writer/illustrator by trade and started on AutoCad 2.6 on a 12" amber textured glass screen with an 8086 box. Mostly 2D, but I remember doing a drawing or two in actual 3D and it was a nightmare! Now, all I work in is 3D.

The shop where I worked had one or two of the old 80s Machintosh boxes (Aircraft Avionics shop).

The first computer I built was a 286 (memory was $100 a meg and to have 4 meg was incredible!) and have been building my own rigs ever since.

 

[SkyBell]

I'm a youngin' in this thread, being only 20, but I am still old enough to remember the days before a GUI was the norm, and when 3 1/2 inch floppies were finally starting to replace the 5 1/4's, and CD's were the up-and-coming storage medium.

Probably sounds kinda pathetic compared to some older members' experience with punch cards/assembly language/what have you, but it still amazes me at how far tech has come in that relatively short time. And I'm now starting to be old enough to long for days gone by.

 

[RenoG]

42 here, oh the memories, actually tech advances so fast all these these memories aren't that old, especially when you have 20yr olds reminising.

 

[ucfgrad93]

I'm 47. I remember working on computers with 640KB of RAM and dual 5 1/4 inch floppy drives. I also remember having to use DOS commands. The first computer I owned had 2MB of RAM, ran at 20Mhz, and had a 40MB harddrive.

 

[rdowns]

I'm 50; no computers in school here. My first exposure was when I got a sales job at ComputerLand, a defunct chain, selling computers. IBM XTs and ATs, Compaq Deskpro 286 and Apple //gs were the hot sellers.


Got my first Mac (an SE) from selling a ton of Apple //s during a xmas contest.

 

[sk1wbw]

I'm 43... had to think a moment there. But the first pixel I ever saw was on the new Pong gaming machine we got for Christmas.

 

[danniexi]

We got some dinosaurs up in this forum... I'm 28.

Hell, during my highschool years we got the new iMacs (in the aqua blue), and then later upgraded to the white eMacs. Had web design, C++, and all sorts of other computer classes available. We were encouraged to NOT use floppy disks and either use our own school account through FTP, email, or even USB drives (zip drives for larger files).

During the later years of my high school I got to use the Mac G4 in the Arts department. The building had quite a number of them, some for visual arts, but the ones I used were for music (protools, midi sequencing, recording, etc.).

It's a shame I never took advantage of all that technology. The most I ever did was check out forums, email, Xanga, and Homestar Runner.

 

[KaraH]

I am 45 and my high school's computer lab was .... interesting. Basically a mix of every piece of computer equipment the school ever had all tossed in the same room and asked to play nice. Originally it was just 2 teletypes hooked to a DEC but eventually they added a trash-80 and a mess of Apple //s. I took pascal there and soon learned that I could wow the teacher by just reading 1 chapter ahead of what he was teaching ... after all, he was learning it from yet another student.

Going over the 1200 bps modem to a university in the next town (whose number I was not exactly supposed to know) .... free to me.

Telling that computer to decnet across the state (which they just hoped people just did not know how to do) to my college at the time ... free to me.

Talking via bitnet to someone in the Netherlands ... free to me.

The look on my Dad's face as he tried to figure out how I was doing all that without a massive phone bill .... priceless.