A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

I had been to junior college, indeed, had my Associate in Arts degree. But this was my first time at an upper-level university. Different classes were in different buildings, so there was a lot of walking involved. The campus was beautiful, and I often took Mary and the kids with me if I weren't going to be too long. The kids could just run and run and be out in the sunshine. For them, it was like a park.

For me, though, the experience was completely different. In fact, I often spent hours in the evening or even after midnight doing my homework, which involved punching cards and waiting in line.

Back in 1978, being a computer science student was more about patience than programming. Nights at the University of West Florida's computer center were a peculiar combination of determination, caffeine, and the sound of a line printer chugging away in the distance.

I had already taught myself BASIC (the forerunner to today's VB.net) but programs in BASIC were typed into a computer with a keyboard and monitor, much as we use computers today. However, my school subjects were FORTRAN and COBOL, and, in 1978, that meant writing the program on paper; transcribing it to punch cards; submitting it for processing, and receiving the result—all of which could easily take hours.

The homework assignments seemed straightforward enough—a program to be written, a solution to be found. It always began with punch cards, those stiff, rectangular sentinels of my work. Each line of code meticulously typed out, one card at a time. I learned quickly that typos weren't just mistakes; they were tragedies. A missing period meant an entire night lost to the stern dictates of the compiler.

Once my stack of cards was complete—carefully ordered, held together by a rubber band for dear life—I made my way to the student computer operator. He was the gatekeeper, perched in his swivel chair, surrounded by humming machines that felt more mysterious than magical. Handing over the cards was a bit like giving a priest your confessions. You hoped for absolution but braced yourself for judgment.

And then, the wait began. The center was quieter at night, but the silence only made the anticipation more acute. The room was dimly lit, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, casting a pale glow over the handful of weary souls like me. We'd sit on the edge of our seats, trading war stories about infinite loops and syntax errors. Everyone hoped their program wouldn't crash the machine and earn them the collective groans of the room.

Eventually, the operator would call my name, and I'd rush to retrieve my printout—a stack of perforated paper that held my fate. More often than not, it wasn't the solution to the homework staring back at me, but a list of errors longer than I cared to admit. The compiler (a computer program that translates written code into the actual machine instructions), in all its unapologetic glory, pointed out my shortcomings line by line.

So back I'd go to the punch card machine, corrections scribbled in the margins of my printout, ready to do it all over again. It was a ritual, a rite of passage, and a test of endurance. By the time the sun hinted at its return, I might finally have a working program—or, at the very least, the satisfaction of having battled the machine and survived to try again.

It wasn't glamorous, and it wasn't easy, but those nights in the computer center taught me that progress often comes one punch card at a time. And, occasionally, with a well-timed muttered curse.

And then, out of the blue, one evening Dr. Miller, the head of the Systems Science department (what they called Computer Science back then), approached me with an invitation to join a cooperative education program with the Environmental Protection Agency. It would involve my spending six months in Washington, D.C. I would be paid, but not enough to move my family—besides, it was only for six months. The CO-OP program would help me find roommates.

I didn't know it then, but that was a turning point that would make inevitable the path I would follow for the rest of my professional life.