Fifty years ago I tried to figure out how to write a program. I found a IBM026 keypunch machine in my high school and used it to punch what I hoped would be my

Fifty years ago I tried to figure out how to write a program. I found a IBM026 keypunch machine in my high school and used it to punch what I hoped would be my first program: A Fortran implementation of the simplex method for solving linear programming problems. I turned the deck over to someone to take over to the school district main building that housed the district's one computer, and a couple of days later I learned that my program didn't even compile. Undeterred, I found a book on BASIC in a public library. The language was so simple and so straightforward that I was able to learn to program by just reading the the book. I had no access to a system running BASIC, but that book enabled me to go back to Fortran and write my first successful program (this time a less ambitious one) that simply printed a one page table of trig function values. Sadly, I've lost that first program's listing. I used to keep it folded up inside of my CRC Handbook of Standard Mathematical Tables, but it's no longer there. Thanks to BASIC, I've had a long, interesting, and successful career.