And for those less familiar with the Dutch language than the average Dutchman/women, “Hallo” is the low-land equivalent of “Hello”… But most of you probably guessed that..

After reading zBerts first Blog, I could not help myself looking at my famous 5 finger system while I was typing this text. At the same time, I wondered what the problem was that he described. For all my life I have been thinking faster than I could write, so typing is actually a way of getting my thoughts on paper as fast as possible.. But the fact that I never learned how to “touch type”, and that my first real typing experience was entering Fortran code (written by somebody else on a piece of paper) on a teletyper connected to a time sharing system called Mark III from GE (so I have given away my age now as well..), is probably the reason for my strange but fast typing technique.

I still remember one afternoon in my early days (it must have been day 3..) as a "real" junior programmer, working on an IBM Mainframe. I was so proud that I changed all the COBOL data definitions from one program (and yes, we all copied a lot…) to a different naming convention using the arrow keys and just two letters in a few minutes.. But then my mentor (a very senior programmer) looked at me and said:”You can do that much faster using the “Change” command in the command line…". I remember my disbelief when I saw him make global changes in the blink of an eye… Programming was truly for “the chosen”… The Sheer Magic!!!

I sometimes think that all that wondering “Gee, I did not know you could do that, maybe I can do something else as well…” in the early days of computing made most of us the people we are today. Never stop wondering why, never stop being curious, never stop to be surprised and never stop wondering if something can be done more efficiently or more creative.

In upcoming blogs, I hope to surprise the readers of this Blog and my buddies Bruce and zBert. Sometimes with new insights, sometimes with blunt observations, sometimes with anger, but always with that typical Dutch humor (yes, it exists… ).

Till next time (or as we say in Holland: “houdoe!!”)

Brammie