As a kid, I didn’t play outside with my friends after school. Instead, I spent hours playing with my Legos and making up stories with my toys. In addition to building colorful tales, I also built my very first laptop!

The “Richard’s Laptop Mark I” had a 15 inch Pizza Hut Box case. At only a few ounces, it was the most lightweight computer before Apple stepped on the scene. Flat, ink-drawn keys, an imaginary backlit screen, volatile secondary storage with a capacity as large as I could remember. Literally, as large as I could remember. And who could forget the lime-green Snapple bottle cap wired mouse. All in all, a pretty dope setup.

It was sooo cool…

Okay, it wasn’t a “real” computer (by conventional means); but, it WAS real to me. I had fun thinking it up, designing it, and assembling the parts to realize my idea. Applying the imagination to create tools is the very essence of software development.

I’ve studied programming for five years. Everything after my first “Hello World” required a mental picture of how a user/tester would interact with the program. Sure, knowledge of specific tools in a programming language are key; however, ingenuity proves a useful skill time and time again. Not only for bringing ideas to life, but birthing new ones as well.

Anyone can read a pizza menu and decide on lunch. But software devs take it a step further with comprehensive diagrams and graphs to achieve the optimal levels of digestive happiness. Whether it’s toppings, or levels of ranch, software devs can and will create the perfect solutions to life’s everyday problems…

Let’s take a second to analyze my RLMI. It had a keyboard, screen, and a mouse. A typical laptop setup in most homes and businesses today. However, since the mouse was wired and I never imagined using wireless peripherals, I had to be closer to the laptop to use it. I was at the mercy of the cord/string length of the mouse. But what if I wanted to sit farther away from the laptop, or use it while in bed? Apparently, this problem was solved the years prior to my RLMI.

In 1991, Logitech, a personal computer and tablet accessory providing company, created the world’s first wireless mouse, the Logitech® MouseMan® Cordless.1 Someone realized a mouse could be more efficient if it were without a cord and brought the idea to life.

It took me a long time to find that out and even longer to write into this post. Also, I didn’t imagine a touchpad on my RLMI back then and to this day I prefer the mouse over the touchpad…

The overlying lesson is, be creative! Take some time to come up with new ideas for projects. Google’s Cardboard Virtual Reality Headset2 and a cordless mouse may have sounded like brilliant science fiction once upon a time, but through inventions one can have the pleasure of expanding their mind and gaining experience with working on a project beginning to end. When you think of a program, or hardware modification, go for it!

Who knows, you might discover the first touchscreen computer. (But THAT would be INSANE…)

Thanks for stopping by! Tune in next week when I talk about how a certain trading card game helped me as a programmer. Go ahead and guess what it is in the comment section below. All sources from this post can be found here

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Coding Fanatic

Thumbnail photo by Joanne hall from FreeImages