My diary 1994 - 1999

I read my diary which I kept from 1994 to 1999. A spoilt child mostly interested in playing and programming videogames having no problems at school is the impression you get first. But then comes August 1995 when I got my first issue of PC-Heimwerker by which I obtained contact with other computer freaks, which resulted in me making more effort to learn "professional" programming (C, Assembler, interrupts, etc.). The early development of Hugi, from a minor side-project to a widespread international magazine, is also covered. The style of the diary slightly matures over the time, though it remains more colloquial than how I used to write in my diskmag. But in general I do not seem to have been somebody to really look for intellectual challenges. I was happy experiencing my duties as not too difficult and being able to do things I like doing. I think gifted children should be given assignments that make them explore their own limits. My father gave me calculus tasks when I was at elementary school age. That was the only thing that went into this direction. Interestingly I was spending time doing the same kind of tasks when I was 11 years old as well, according to my diary. There was too little imagination what else I could be studying in addition to the not very challenging tasks at school. I recall I bought Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming" (all three volumes released so far) some months before my high school graduation exams in 2001. I did start reading it, which is documented by the notes and remarks I wrote inside the book, but I didn't get far, as other things apparently had higher priority. I think that instead of doing routine tasks such as editing and formatting articles, young people should spend more time learning.