What first sparked your interest in computers?

December 17, 2009 2:06 PM

I need help finding citations for a story about programmer's inspirations. A giant whiteboard asks for the spark that interested people in computers and the answers are all video games.

I recall reading a story about a whiteboard at a Silicon Valley company, I think it was Google, but for all I recall it could be MS in Redmond.

The story goes: There was a giant whiteboard hallway wall where someone would ask a question for people to answer on the board. One day someone put on the board "What motivated your interest in programming?" and the first answer was Super Mario Bros, (or something like that) leading to an epic list of old video games.

Can anyone point me to a website or reference of this story, or correct my story?

posted by pwnguin to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Jules Bloomenthal, while delivering a technical paper called "Edge Inference with Applications to Anti-Aliasing," in 1983, at the National ACM/IEEE SIGGRAPH proceedings, asked for a show of hands. There were maybe 120 graphics programmers in attendance.

"Who here first got into computer graphics as a result of a psychedelic drug experience?" Maybe 3/4 of the hands went up.
posted by StickyCarpet at 8:24 PM on December 17, 2009

Response by poster: Unfortunately, it needs to be videogames if I aim to use it as a citation for video games causing the gender gap in CS.
posted by pwnguin at 3:18 PM on December 18, 2009