46

Thirty years ago my father, at great sacrifice, bought me a ZX-81 computer, and that’s how it all began.

Actually it wasn’t quite like that. A few months earlier I had started learning to program these things in a workshop at my school, but clearly my dad noticed how much these machines interested me.

One of the charms of the old computers of the late 70s and early 80s was that they came with nothing but a BASIC interpreter, so for a good while you had no choice but to start learning to program. Fortunately they came with manuals you could learn from, and from there on it was up to your imagination.

I owe a lot to that gift, to that vocation I discovered in those years. Thanks to this trade I can support my family, educate my children, and enjoy many professional satisfactions. I am a person satisfied with his work. I suppose I’m fortunate, because I do and work on what I like; it seems not everyone has that luck, so I have a lot to thank life for.

Today I turn 46, and I’m happy. I suppose the best is yet to come...

It seems last year I skipped the tradition of giving you a song by Alan Parsons, so now we pick it back up, with two tracks: a somewhat nostalgic one, “Old and Wise”, and an instrumental from the album On Air: Apollo.

Old and Wise

Apollo