Circa 1990, I believe, my mom brought me to see a doctor for a reason that I have long forgotten. In fact it was a very forgetful event aside for one little thing ... Back then (if you recall), Doctors were very much into Personal Computers (in France at least), they were the early adopters of the digital age yet to come. In fact, they were so much into their computer that for the most part of the visit, they were only looking at their screen, typing away. While waiting in the waiting room, I noticed, casually lying on a coffee table, the (then) latest issue of Science & Vie - Micro (a french magazine dedicated to computers) with on the cover .... a NeXTcube in all its glory! And boy, was that hardware cool and sexy!
Needless to said I feverishly devoured the article, lusting away on the pictures and screenshots of NeXTSTEP in action, and I was amazed and aroused. At that time (I was only 16) my experience with computers have been limited to various BASIC powered "desktop" (Macintosh,Amstrad CPC,...) and pocket computers (Casio FX-702P). If I did program a bit back then (mostly on my pocket calculator), most of my time was really spend playing video games on my bulky IBM PC clone (8088 If I'm not mistaken) running DOS. It's easy to see how NeXT's hardware and OS was very much forward thinking ... It looked not only like something from a science fiction movie, but was also sporting features and a user interface that were very uncommon for the time (at least outside of the universities/multinationals circles). I will love to think that this encounter was the trigger of a closer involvement in computer science ... but I don't think it is really the case. I did start learning the more powerful Pascal language around that time ... but I can't recall if it was due to been aroused by NeXT.
Needless to said I feverishly devoured the article, lusting away on the pictures and screenshots of NeXTSTEP in action, and I was amazed and aroused. At that time (I was only 16) my experience with computers have been limited to various BASIC powered "desktop" (Macintosh,Amstrad CPC,...) and pocket computers (Casio FX-702P). If I did program a bit back then (mostly on my pocket calculator), most of my time was really spend playing video games on my bulky IBM PC clone (8088 If I'm not mistaken) running DOS. It's easy to see how NeXT's hardware and OS was very much forward thinking ... It looked not only like something from a science fiction movie, but was also sporting features and a user interface that were very uncommon for the time (at least outside of the universities/multinationals circles). I will love to think that this encounter was the trigger of a closer involvement in computer science ... but I don't think it is really the case. I did start learning the more powerful Pascal language around that time ... but I can't recall if it was due to been aroused by NeXT.
18 years after, I'm finally making the move to NeXTSTEP ... or at least to its descendant, MacOS X. It's not that I could haven't done earlier since we have had an Apple computer for the past 5 years, but the conditions were never really right ...
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