Jason Michaelson

Jason’s first computer was a Commodore VIC-20. His dad would painstakingly type in programs from books or magazines and save them to a cassette tape — and just like that, Space Invaders was running on the family TV.

Both of his grandfathers were railroaders, and he grew up surrounded by and fascinated with trains, both real and model. As computers began to penetrate the hobby of model railroading, hobby magazines started filling with BASIC program listings and electronic schematics, and Jason was hooked. That fascination drove him to not just mimic the programs he’d seen but to learn the ins and outs of the languages in order to do more.

He has since amassed a rather large collection of model railroad equipment and has big plans for when he gets around to building a layout. That same fascination with software led to a career engineering code in virtually every modern programming language and operating system in use today — making him something of a jack of all trades, software-wise.