Almost thirty years ago, I wrote a bulletin board for my Commodore Vic-20. It had public and private rooms (message areas), private mail and an online game. U

Almost thirty years ago, I wrote a bulletin board for my Commodore Vic-20. It had public and private rooms (message areas), private mail and an online game. Users could create a room and make it public or private. The room topics ranged from string theory to general messages. The board was very popular with each user spending an average of 65 minutes on it. One of my users said "Anyone who can write a BBS for a Vic-20 can program!" and hired me as a programmer. I went on, much later, to write safety-critical software for medical equipment and an air traffic control system. The guy who hired me is now working at Google.