@raph I have so much thanks for the "grown ups" who encouraged and mentored me in the early days of learning to program, as young as 9 or 10 years old. Life would have ended up very different without them.

@raph He gave a talk at the CHM (He was inducted as a fellow in 2004) I got to talk with him and was really struck by someone who had had such a huge impact was so approachable. When another person in the group challenged Modula-2 he listened respectfully and engaged based on the the idea that the speakers premise was true, then nicely dissented based on objective observations. I hope I can always be that respectful when challenged.

@raph this is a wonderful memory.

@raph It is so important that we really take time to listen to kids especially when they admire you. These memories are what produce the future professionals and leaders. Thanks for sharing!

@raph Our big assignment at uni in 1988–1989 was to write a dating app in Pascal, including personality, preferences and compatibility heuristics to suggest matches. Mine seemed to work pretty well… It was fun to write and I should have kept going with it, ready to beat Zuck by a few years!

@raph At my first student job, I got the task to implement a parser. My boss gave me Wirth's book Compilerbau and said, read the first four chapters, more than that will only confuse you. I did as he said and could write the parser.
Some 30 years later, I tried to read the other chapters, past chapter four, and was confused. In between I had studied computer science and gained a lot of professional programming experience, but for chapters five and on, I was still too stupid.