Charles Petzold Quotes

I am a programmer.

I got my first computer in the 6th grade or so. As soon as I got it, I was interested in finding out how it worked and how the programs worked and then figuring out how to write programs at just deeper and deeper levels within the system.

I've been programming computers since elementary school, where they taught us, and I stuck with computer science through high school and college.

Computer science is the operating system for all innovation.

Besides, REAL computers have a rename system call.

I'm thinking of going to programming school. Learn how to sit down at any computer and learn to do anything on it. That's all I have left and have interest in.

In a chemistry class there was a guy sitting in front of me doing what looked like a jigsaw puzzle or some really weird kind of thing. He told me he was writing a computer program.

You might not think that programmers are artists, but programming is an extremely creative profession. It's logic-based creativity.

I was around computers from birth; we had one of the first Macs, which came out shortly before I was born, and my dad ran a company that wrote computer operating systems. I don't think I have any particular technical skills; I just got a really large head start.

In early 1993, a hostile observer might have had grounds for thinking that the Unix story was almost played out, and with it the fortunes of the hacker tribe.

The first programming assignment I had in high school was to find the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I thought it would be cooler to write a program to get the teacher's password and all the other students' passwords. And the teacher gave me an A and told the class how smart I was.

My father taught me Basic and rudimentary C, I learned everything else on my own, including studying computational complexity on my own. That's more a function of my age than anything else though - back when I was in school there were hardly any programming classes.

I actually started off majoring in computer science, but I knew right away I wasn't going to stay with it. It was because I had this one professor who was the loneliest, saddest man I've ever known. He was a programmer, and I knew that I didn't want to do whatever he did. So after that, I switched to Communications.

My high school, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, showed me that anything is possible and that you're never too young to think big. At 15, I worked as a computer programmer at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab. After graduating, I attended Stanford for a degree in economics and computer science.

As a programmer, you're working with very simple structures compared to the brain. So I was always fascinated by how the brain works.

At MIT, mostly what I did was documentation. I sort of read things. Wrote some descriptions of various aspects of the file system. Did not really do very much programming at all. At least on Multics.

I was a programmer.

The last thing I would ever do is try to become a network programmer.

The whole thought of a career with computers - given that hardly anybody even knew what they were - it wasn't even a concept.

Every time I can find another engineer to add to the Chrome OS platform, I'm going to hire him.

I took Pascal, and I was terrible. And then, when I went to NYU, I minored in computer science. I just couldn't code. I just didn't have the patience for it.

I worked as a programmer for 16 years.

My dad got me an iMac, and I spent my whole childhood with my eyes glued to it. I was technically savvy and knew how to make it work for me.

I went to Drexel University, majored in computer science. Drexel has a great program - they call it co-op - but its, like, mandatory to graduate to do internships. I loved it because it helped me figure out very quickly that I didn't really want to be a programmer.

I always loved computers - it's something inside you.