When I first heard the news that Steve Jobs had passed away I blew it off thinking it was yet another hoax, but this time it wasn’t.
My first introduction to computers was in 1986. I was a junior in high school and computers were in their infancy. Fortunately, my high school, had Mac’s and these glorified typewriters called word-processors from a company called IBM.
I don’t remember much of the IBM word-processor class other than walking around with floppy disks and creating shapes with the text.
The programming class had the Mac’s. I created my first “app” on a 7″ green screen MacIntosh using BASIC programming. My “app” was a pseudo ATM program. To create something from bytes and bits – I thought that was the greatest thing in the world. Thank you Steve Jobs, you gave me my passion for computers and technology.
Ten years later, I was working at my father-in-law’s office. Fortunately, his office only used Mac’s. By then the Mac’s screen was larger with some bits of color. There was this new thing called the World Wide Web and you could use a specific programming language called Hyper-Text-Markup-Language (HTML) to create simple web pages. This was my first taste of creating web pages and seeing my creations go from a bunch of code to web page design was remarkable. Thank you Steve Jobs, you gave me my passion for web programming.
There are so many products that have been created by Apple with Steve Jobs’ vision that have revolutionized technology and changed how the world communicates. Technology that assists us in our daily lives whether it is at home or at work all from the palm of our hands. Technology that is remarkable and yet we take for granted.
An extraordinary man.
Goodbye Steve, you will be missed but not forgotten.
