Perhaps the most valuable classes I took were high school English. I'd never thought that writing weekly essays, compositions, and book reports would prepare me

Perhaps the most valuable classes I took were high school English. I'd never thought that writing weekly essays, compositions, and book reports would prepare me to write a book about computing. After seeing it on several best-seller lists, I called my high school English teacher and thanked him for all his time and encouragement. And not just writing: he made us perform Shakespeare. Really handy when you're interviewed on TV and have two minutes to summarize your book. Or when you're invited to do a keynote speech at a conference. Yep, I learned to code in 1965 (assembler & Fortran II on our high school's IBM-1620). Learned calculus, organic chem, and basic electronics as well. But nothing came close to three years of terrific (and challenging) high school English classes.