1977. 2nd grade at Lucille M. Nixon Elementary School in Palo Alto. We had a class where we learned how to program in BASIC on the school district's HP2000 main

1977. 2nd grade at Lucille M. Nixon Elementary School in Palo Alto. We had a class where we learned how to program in BASIC on the school district's HP2000 mainframe. I loved it. Within a few months I knew more about programming than the instructor. Two years later I wrote my own bulletin board software in assembly language on a CompuPro that my dad and I bought at a swap meet. Then I hit puberty. In those days it wasn't ok for girls to be nerdy and play with computers. I succumbed to peer pressure. Eventually I went on to a career in biology. Knowing how to program has served me well, but it never became a career. I sometimes wonder how things might have turned out if I had been born 20-30 years later.