My love/hate/love relationship with Apple has a long and storied history. My first experience with an Apple computer was back in elementary, where each class had one Apple computer per classroom. Of course, the classic game of the time was Oregon Trail – assuming the floppy disk worked. There was no thrill like the thrill of shooting a buffalo on the green and grey computer screen. Outside of playing Oregon Trail however, there was little use for that particular computer at the time.
Fast forward to my freshmen year at the University of Michigan. I’m enrolled in my first C++ course, CS 183. At the time, I was cursing Steve Jobs for returning to Apple and creating the “innovative” bubble iMac. Why? Because at the time, the University CS Program required all students to program and submit their code via the computer labs. We were using a program called Code Warrior, and for whatever reason, the University only offered it in their labs on Macs. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, but Macs at that time were running OS 9, which was so bad and clunky that it made me absolutely despise Apple. I remember having a heated conversation with a fellow student regarding how horrible Apple products were. Luckily for me, a friend of mine had a copy of the Windows version of Code Warrior, so I could code from the comfort of my cramped freshmen dorm room. This saved me the 5 minute travel time down to the computer lab and away from the despicable Macs! It also allowed me to code a pretty kick-ass calculator that could add, subtract, divide and multiply – and output the answer. I was on my way to programming stardom.
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