we actually unearthed a possible lead in this business. but it's a complicated issue.
it's not like we'd never programmed a computer before the mid-1990s; we got taught some programming in grade school and in addition we often tried to implement stuff from the Scientific American "Computer Recreations" column (back when they had one) and from library books on one of the Commodore machines that we had for a few years. but our goal upon graduating from high school was chemistry, and when we went to Caltech to study that we did almost no hobby programming. we did, however, start thinking of computer programming as a possible occupation while we were at Caltech, because we'd been introduced to computer games in a major way. but we didn't actually start doing anything until after we tumbled back to San Diego and SDSU, where we were able to finally make ourselves learn to program in C starting round 1995. we'd conceived some strong desire to learn C in particular but needed the structure of classroom instruction in order to make it stick. then for some years afterwards programming was how we filled our time, even though I felt like it was an ignoble pursuit. we'd wanted to be a scientist and instead we were fiddling with computers—I could see that there was no academic rigor in the "computer science" we were being taught. I ended up double-majoring in Classics at SDSU because I needed to feel like I was learning something worthwhile in school.
so imagine how it was for us in the late 1990s: we were programming computers all the time, and yet despising ourselves for doing it. it was a peculiar state of affairs, one that I didn't even begin trying to make sense of back then, but now it seems adequately explained by plurality. we'd developed some dissociative introject while we were at Caltech probably, they were really into computer programming and were giving us these irresistible impulses to bash away at C and C++ code, and meanwhile I was fuming to myself about betraying our education and hurling us into Latin and Greek studies out of some bizarre sense of doing penance for failing out of Caltech and out of a career in a proper physical science. but I have to be objective here: studying computer science at SDSU is what enabled us to get some kind of education back on track and eventually have an excuse for leaving San Diego and moving to Seattle. I could claim that it was for career reasons, because that's where the programming jobs were.
so, what happened exactly at Caltech? we were young and stupid and completely unaware of ourselves and the problems with our brain, and we exposed ourselves to a lot of strange new media, and we experimented with psychedelic drugs—disastrously, at one point. it seems only likely that we picked up some passengers.
~Chara