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So many choices.
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Somewhere, there are photos of a family Thanksgiving trip to Yosemite, in the mid-80s. We had lots of fun hiking and climbing, but my father spent most of the time on a similar looking Compaq computer, at the cabin. He also had fun, his own kind, though. There is a photo of him on the computer, which I won’t post publicly, but it is a family favorite.
It was around this time, he went from a laborer and custodian to well paid computer guy, through his own process of education. It just in time too, because his back was torn up.
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That’s great your dad was able to switch careers.
The Corona and Compaq were considered a “portable computer” back in the day. It weighed about 25 lbs I think.
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I can remember it being too heavy for me to carry, but I was small as a child.
Dad was always very smart, but his path through life was… interesting. Early in life he was in “imports and exports” during some “hazy years in South America” which he didn’t explain until I was a lot older.
When we came to the US, he worked for my mother’s father as a laborer and eventually managed a group of people. When that company (and the local construction industry) went ker-bloo-ie, he worked as a custodian for several years. That’s when he got into databases and programming, because there’s nothing like disrespectful junior high kids to make a person consider a career change.
Like the cat he always was, he pulled off the trick of becoming yet another new person, and eventually got to live a comfy retirement for over 10 years.
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Nice story!
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Brian Kernighan wrote and contributed to several other books in addition to the famous “K&R C”
One I was just looking at is the second edition of “The Elements of Programming Style”
Even though it also came out in 1978, it represents an even earlier era — in the 1970s C was a niche language used by a few people in a few places, and to reach what passed for a “mass audience” in the computer world at the time, Kernighan and Plauger drew all their coding examples from programs written in Fortran and PL/I 
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I remember those keyboards and mice. Great design – Postmodern Brick.
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Two things I want to point out about the desk:
- The Macintosh itself is sitting on its own surface that has an adjustable angle.
- There is an early laser printer hidden behind the book shelf/storage.
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Very high finger effort, I seem to remember.
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I learned to type on an Underwood just like that.
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I’ve never used a mechanical typewriter. My mom always had Smith-Corona electrics and the high school had a lab of IBM Selectrics. Then they switched the lab to PS-1s (and one token Mac SE with no hard drive) and I fell in love with what I called the IBM Aircraft Carrier keyboard.
I’m meh about 10-keys but the arrow home-end islands in alignment with the control key… one of my continuing difficulties with laptops and Lapmacs is fumbling while editing text.
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