There are a few moments in our lives when we have an epiphany. This Substack flows from one of them: the moment, well over 40 years ago, in the tiny spare bedroom at my parents’ house, after 3 weeks experimenting with dad’s ZX81, when I suddenly understood what powerful tools computers are.
“It’s like magic: you could do anything with a computer, if you could just work out how.”
I stopped dreaming about becoming a wizard. “Just working out how” has defined much of the rest of my life. In the early days, I thought it was all about how to use the tool. Over time, I began to realise that, often, it’s more about the toolmaker.
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