Some brief tedious personal history #1
Like many of my age, the first computer I ever used was a ZX Spectrum and I guess it was the first place I ever “programmed” something. That was with The Quill and I recall sending the created adventure to some programming houses and getting a phone call back saying they were interested in using me with a new RPG game they were making to help create the story line. Unfortunately it never happened but I had a lot of fun with the software.
The second main computer I owned was the Atari ST. I can’t remember why I went for that model instead of an Amiga but out of that I had an interest in Unix as a friend of mine was a Unix man and I was fascinated by that world. The interest came through a thing called Minix and I even ended up writing a few paragraphs for a popular ST magazine of the time, ST World. It was just a small addedum to the main article but I was quite excited.
At the time I was working for a company and had just started working with their new computer system which ran the Pick OS. I didn’t realise it at the time but the entire O/S was a relational database system and I learnt a lot about RDMS’s without realising it.
The company was a printer called Multisets Ltd, later Williams Lea Business Forms, providing cheque books, business cards, stationery and a pile of other things to companies within the City of London and the dawn of Desk Top Publishing was about to occur.
