To program, or not To program

   What is "to program", most of us can learn any scripting language in a day for most tasks.  Some can do most anything in any language, just give us a week to get familiar the old girl.

   Heck, lock us up in a cold dark space, and we'll crank out app after app in any language you want, and call it a day, as long as the money is good. But... what is it?

   Where did it all come from?

   I can... explicitly remember, a point in my life when my time-line changed to lead where I am right now....

<flashback>

   I was 8 or 7.. let me 're' phase that in terms I would have used at that time. I was in the second grade.  My father, bless his soul, had just typed a program into the computer, and I had at the time, been invited to 'try it out' by my mother.

   I suspect now...  that it may have been a hoax, in order to cease my incessant need to disassemble and break and learn about 'everything' in the house, there was nothing sacred to the yearnings of my knowledge. The program was Guess my number, running on a good ol '78 Atari800.

   I don't remember playing the game so much as, what I did once I got bored of it.  I distinctly remember thinking, I want to do 'something' else. Then I recall reaching up and pushing in, the big 'System Reset' button right there on the top, because come on, where else are you gonna put it, right?

   Lucky for me, this did not remove the program from memory, but reset the execution to the basic interpreter.  Had I turned it off and then back on, mind you all my father's hard work would have been lost. And then the next sibling would not have gotten their turn in line, to play the computer 'game'.
</flashback>

That was the day, I became a computer programmer.