Jason Michaelson

My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20. My dad would painstakingly type in programs from books or magazines, and save them to a cassette tape. Next thing we knew we had Space Invaders playing on the TV set, thanks to that VIC-20.

Both of my grandfathers were railroaders, and so I grew up surrounded by and fascinated with trains, both real and model. Computers were starting to penetrate the hobby of model railroading. The hobby magazines of the day were starting to fill with BASIC program listings and electronic schematics to do all sorts of fun things for a model railroad. I was fascinated.

That fascination drove me to not want to just mimic the programs I’d seen but also to learn about the ins and outs of the languages, in order to do more. I’m happy to report that at this point in my life I have amassed a rather large collection of model railroad equipment, I have not yet started on a model railroad to operate it on, but I have a lot of plans for when I do build something. However, that’s largely a result of the fascination with software leading to a career engineering code in virtually every modern programming language and operating system in use today. I’m something of a jack of all trades, software-wise.