“A few days back we hosted an interview with one of the two big
names of the hobby Linux gaming houses. Today, it is time to
interview the other big name, Bill Kendrick of
NewBreedSoftware.“1. Tell us how you got involved with computer
programming. What do you do in ‘real life’?“Bill Kendrick: I have my family–especially my brother
Dean–to thank for my interest in computers. Some of my earliest
memories are playing on a Pong console with him.“When I was about 6 or 7 years old (he was 12 or 13), he got a
Timex Sinclair 1000 computer. (For those unfamiliar with it, this
thing was about 7″ x 7” in size, with a flat membrane keyboard, and
2 whole kilobytes of RAM.) He and I played on it, mostly typing in
games from books.“After about a year, my parents bought him a Commodore 64, so I
got the Timex. Somehow–probably thanks to the fact that all of the
BASIC commands were available in one keystroke, thanks to a cool,
context-sensitive cursor–I started picking up BASIC. I have a
vague memory of jotting down programs on the back of homework
sheets from grammar school…”
Related Story:
OSNews: Interview with Michael Speck of LGames(Aug 13,
2002)