In I believe 1975 I moved across the campus from 8 years of fines arts study to the nascent computer department (actually math department---wouldn't become comp

In I believe 1975 I moved across the campus from 8 years of fines arts study to the nascent computer department (actually math department---wouldn't become computer department until long after I left) sat down in front of a model 29 keypunch machine took a summer course in a pseudo language modeled on IBM 360 assembler. It was made up of macros and was enough to show the basics of programming if not language. Shortly after that I was handed my professors old copy of Susan Stern's book on IBM BAL. For those who have never had the pleasure, it is (was?) very near a high level language even if it had a low level implementation. My first observation was that there was very little difference (meta) from planning a piece of sculpture to planning a program. As I joked, the biggest difference was clean-up; with code, you just turn things off, with sculpture you spend a fair amount of time with physical work. My first significant project was building a concordance generator---a key words in context generator from a given corpus. This meant not only the usual trapping of text in, new text out with no library to aid, but taking quick-sort apart and writing it in assembler. Looking back it was one of the harder things I've ever done; but that said, also one of the most enjoyable. There after I began the usual progression, skipped PL1, took FORTRAN etc. I was introduced to C at the New Jersey Computer Faire by Scott Guthrie who was selling a version of Small C, enough to get a leg up. Then BDS C on my 8085. Looking back, I've loon since adopted an approach of 'What have I lost, what have I gained' with regards to the language and syntax. Programming itself remains the same, although some things are easier to express in some languages versus others (Noam Chomsky and 'Language conditions thought' seems to apply to computer languages in my opinion.) Over the years, it is the usual 'Wash, rinse, repeat' with regard to language with the selection dependent on what the client wants or provides.