Assignment 19: Theodore

Sixty-five kilobytes is not much. It’s enough storage to hold a novella, a screenplay, or all the blog posts I complete in a year, but not even ten percent of a picture. The small flash drive that I carry in my backpack holds that much memory 40,000 times over. I had such a limited amount of memory when I was writing code on a TI-84 calculator — the same one I still carry. With all due respect to Texas Instruments (TI), a TI-84’s processor is anemic, its screen is smaller than an index card, and its storage is usually less than 65 kilobytes. But that calculator was sufficient for me four years ago, when I started to learn how to program. In fact, I shouldn't complain about lack of memory; a TI-84 is only slightly less advanced than the original Apple computers.

    Admittedly, becoming an amateur programmer has not drastically changed my life. I’m not going to start my own software company or choose a major in computer science. Still, knowing how to code removes the stress from my Computer Science class, not to mention reminding me that computers serve humans, not vice versa. Trying to quit a frozen web browser by clicking on the red dot is like telling your dog to get off the couch by passing it a note: Your dog will ignore you. However, if you understand how to use Linux, you can yell at your dog, forcing your browser to quit.

    Thus, I am grateful to whoever suggested that I learn programming, but until recently I couldn't remember who it was. It turns out that it wasn't a person — unless you count fictional Victorian-era detectives as real. That’s right: Sherlock Holmes gave me this advice. While planning this blog entry, I have rediscovered an entire series of books written from Holmes’s perspective about computers; I must have read one of them four years ago. (If you are interested, search for “Sherlock Holmes elementary BASIC.”) To summarize, my ability to write code stems from a literary character whose original creator died before computers before invented. It’s a cliché, but truth really is stranger than fiction.