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→Programmer portraits: What have these six men got in common? A TI, for one thing.
"I was in college, a math major," he says. "To get a job in math you had to get a Ph.D. and I was tired of school."
At the suggestion of an instructorwho said that programming lookedlike an upcoming field, he applied atUnivac in Los Angeles. "The upshot is, I didn't want to be amathematician so I took an easier jobas a programmer.''" Gene Harter, a partner in NotPolyopticsNot-Polyoptics in Woodbridge, Virginia,saw programming as a variation ofwhat he was already doing. "I program games," he says. "Foryears before I programmed computersI would design games on boardsand paper and I was always reallyinterested in what a computer coulddo. I even got to the point where Idesigned games on programmablecalculators-that's all I could afford.''"In 1980 I got a TI computer for$1,000. I knew what I wanted to do atthat point." '''WHY TI?'''
Economy was one reason.
Vaughn says, "I wasn't sure I'd be
