On Feb 15, 2008, at 3:09 PM, Todd Zaki Warfel wrote: > Just out of curiosity, what was some of the first software you > worked on 20 years (or close to 20 years) ago? I've only been on a > computer since 1990 (not counting the Commodore I tinkered with) > and just wonder why types of software applications people were > using pre-1990.
In early 1990, I dropped out of college (where I was studying set and lighting design for theater) to help start a small Macintosh graphics software company called Specular Int'l. We created and shipped Infini- D, Collage, Logomotion, and Texturescape. It wasn't high-end 3D graphics like Wavefront and Pixar work at the time, but we were part of the crew of companies who helped push 3D graphics to the consumer level along with companies like Strata and RayDream. Inifini-D evolved and later got bought by Metacreations, merged code with RayDream, and is now known as Carrera. Also, Collage was my personal project, and shipped with dynamic layering (even in CMYK color mode) before Photoshop 3.0, even though Collage did it at a much lower and more basic level. Ah the days of the Mac II, IIfx and the IIci! Before that, I was a theater rat with a computing hobby. I actually programmed my own Pac-Man animations in BASIC on a Timex Sinclair that my Dad bought me when I was 12. (1K of RAM and a tape backup storage system... gotta love it.) I also helped an older friend of mine create an ASCII version of Donkey Kong when I was 13 on his mother's Trash 80. He did the hard coding, I did the ASCII art and helped with easy animation coding once he showed me how it worked. While simple little things, I was lucky enough to get introduced to the whole "pixel" concept way early in the 80s, which proved useful much later on in life. And that kind of doodling in software was always something I did growing up because I loved video games. But I never took it seriously enough to get deep into coding beyond more front-end oriented level concepts. (HyperCard was my favorite software toy in the late 80s though.) Mostly interface sorts of things, and a lot less engine or algorithm sorts of things. In high school, since I knew my way around a computer, I used to help teachers and seniors with programs like Wordstar and Microsoft Word, learning concepts from those programs that still have relevance today. I also used PageMaker 1.0 to create the theater programs for our high school productions in 1986-87, never even thinking that one day I'd help in the design of it's successor. Now I feel old... 8^) -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
