Hello Chris,

Great article - especially for someone who has vivid memories of playing the text adventure 'Haunted House' on my own TI-99/4A (which is still in my garage - along with my BBC Model B with the 32K RAM upgrade and paired double-sided 80 track 5.25" floppy disc drives).

I remember being fascinated with computing ever since reading about the planet-sized valve computers in 'classic era' Science Fiction. I got into coding then because it 1) achieved something useful (albeit a game) and 2) was really, really interesting.

You may be aware that there is now an emerging movement in UK education to reintroduce 'Computer Science' into the curriculum, i.e. how computers work and basic (not BASIC) coding, rather than the current emphasis on just teaching how to use office automation applications.

Maybe one day I will see my grandkids sitting in front of a screen at home code-wrangling and going 'oo ah!' when they create their first spinning 3D polygon with hidden line removal (I lost over a year of my life (and nearly my marriage) playing Elite when it first came out - I even made a proportional joystick from scratch to better control my imaginary spacecraft).

Of course, nothing will ever be a substitute for those happy hours spent entering Hex assembler for the 6502 :)