<Begin Segment 17>

TI: So what happened? What did you do?

RH: Well, I decided, I enjoyed math in different ways. I enjoyed science and also, along with the music stuff, so I said, well, maybe I should look at science and stuff, so I decided I'll go into engineering. And so I picked, for whatever reason, chemical engineering seemed like an interesting field to go into. And San Jose State had a great engineering program, so that's why I was kind of looking at San Jose State to come down here and do that, so that was one of the reasons I picked that, picked a college down here to come here. So I applied to several colleges but ended up coming down here anyways, and that was in the fall of '69, basically.

TI: But before that, you, was this the time you took that programming class?

RH: Yes, so right after high school I decided, just to get a jump start, 'cause during my senior year in high school I was able to take advanced placement classes in the community college, so I was actually attending Merit Community College to take, like, English, advanced English classes, so I was able to get some of that advanced work done, so I thought, I was in that mindset, well, maybe I'll just get a jump start on stuff. So since I finished college, I decided, well, be maybe good if I just took a couple of classes just to kind of get into that mindset of thinking and also just get some stuff out of the way.

TI: So this was the summer after graduating high school, you took...

RH: Right.

TI: Okay.

RH: So it was right out of high school. I enrolled into summer session at Cal State Hayward and took, signed up for two classes, one of 'em being this computer programming class, 'cause I never had an opportunity really to take something like that and I thought this would probably be the, the field of the future, so I should start really learning what this is all about. And it was, at that time it was one of those key punch card classes. It was a real basic Fourtran programming class, so, and that's where I met PJ because she was in that class also. 02-19:20

TI: And how, I'm just curious, how did you like programming a Fourtran? Was that something that interested you after you took the class?

RH: It was interesting. I mean, it was, maybe for me, I guess it was, 'cause I always thought computers was kind of like a little bit engineering, but math and stuff, but the programming stuff actually was more logic thinking, because you had to be very logical in process and thinking in order to make things operate and function, and so it was a different kind of challenge for me, in thinking that way, 'cause I never really dealt with that, so, and so I guess, in a way, for me it was interesting, but it was something I kind of decided, I don't know if I want to do that kind of work where I have to be always kind of looking at things in that logic way. So it was not, I thought it was good, but it was not something I wanted to pursue.

TI: Well, that's, seemed like it was good that you, you exposed yourself to that to figure that out. I worked at Microsoft and so there are a lot of programmers who actually were musicians, so there's this connection that I've seen between musicians and really good software developers. I'm just curious how you saw that.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.