A 90s Kid’s Journey Through Early Tech

Intro #

How it all started

Born in the 90s with the fortune of having three older siblings I inherited a lot of hobbies and tastes from, I grew up in a great time to learn about emerging technology from an early age. On weekends, my parents often took me to the flea market where I developed a passion for thrifting.

One of the more memorable finds was a Vtech learning computer. Those things were primarily meant to teach kids basic math and spelling in a gamified way.

BASIC #

The model I got actually had a slimmed-down version of a BASIC interpreter. It came with a handbook that explained the rough syntax in a way that was astonishingly comprehensible for a child. It was an amazing experience presenting a few text-based “adventures” (horrendous amounts of GOTO and conditional statements) to my friends who seemed to be entertained. Maybe they were just being polite. It was still great.

Another very memorable thing I picked up was a digital piano, the GEM WS 2. I was intrigued that it came with a floppy drive and allowed me to record and play back songs. This actually fueled my motivation to learn to play the piano, which is a hobby of mine to this day—although I have gotten very rusty nowadays as I took a long break from playing as an adult.

The biggest bargain of them all and, in hindsight, the most formative find was a fully loaded Commodore 64. It included a floppy and cassette drive, dozens of games and software, both commercial and homebrew, and lots of homemade “backups”. All that for 10 Euros in mint condition. I like to think that the seller at the flea market knew it was worth more, but he made an exception because he saw the excitement in my eyes. Or maybe he believed me when I told him 10 Euros was all I had (which was true—I was not a good haggler). That thing really introduced me to the concept of personal computing. The C64’s way of loading programs from floppy sometimes allows the user to take a look at the source code. Sure, much of it was obfuscated or written in Assembly, but looking through the listings of some simpler programs, especially homebrew, amazed the 9-year-old me.

Even though the Vtech’s BASIC interpreter was very limited, everything I learned from that trusty handbook worked on the C64. I often hogged the living room TV for hours recreating some of my old programs and improving them. You could even call it refactoring.

Moving to x86 #

Sadly, after a few months, the PSU went bad, and it often blew a fuse in our home, which understandably angered my parents. Hugely overestimating my understanding of electronics, I wanted to take it apart. I didn’t even know what a capacitor was at the time, so my parents made the wise decision to forbid me from going anywhere near mains voltage. I imagine they noticed how sad that made me, and hence allowed me to use the old family computer, a 386 IBM clone running DOS. I fondly remember playing countless hours of Commander Keen with my brother.

After some time, the computer was upgraded to a Pentium II machine with Windows 95. The GUI-based operating system was mind-blowing to me as a child. However, the internal workings were largely abstracted away from the user. Everything got easier to use—but harder to understand.

One day, I “borrowed” a few Star Wars cards from my brother, unbeknownst to him. He knew POD was my favorite game at that time, and the next time I tried starting it up, a window popped up telling me to return the cards and apologize before I could play again. A few tears and an apology later, he laughingly showed me how he switched out the game’s executable with a small Visual C++ program. This taught me that even on a higher level, multitasking operating system like Windows, programming things was fairly accessible. I still have the book “Jetzt lerne ich Visual C++ 6” (Markt & Technik, 1999) I inherited from him in my library today.

Where it all got me #

Don’t get me wrong. I was not some kind of youth prodigy fluent in Assembly or tinkering with embedded systems before I could read. I was simply a curious kid growing up in a time when tech gradually became a part of our everyday lives, at a pace that seemed to be very accessible. Although my enthusiasm for tech never truly faded, there were certainly phases during adolescence when other, more socially engaging activities took precedence. Today I can be very grateful that I had mindful parents and siblings, who did not just put me in front of a Super Nintendo but actually allowed me to discover the intricacies of computing in my very own way.

Curiously enough, as a kid I was not aware that there are people writing software for a living. In my mind I compared it to playing the piano as a hobby, where I knew some professional pianists were exceptionally gifted and could fill concert halls and live comfortably from their talent. Back then I figured it had to be pretty similar with programming and that the software I used was the absolute pinnacle to be released to the public. I had no clue people were coding as a 9 to 5. It wasn’t until I was close to finishing school and needed to choose a career path that I realized just how large and thriving the global tech industry actually was. Even after a decade in the field, it still hasn’t lost its magic. I feel privileged to maintain a creative hobby that doubles as a fast-moving, well-established profession where learning new things every day is encouraged.