Re: A Link of note

[Roy and/or Janet Miller <millers@inetnebr.com>]

Rubywand wrote:

> About the only disagreement would be with the term
> "hobbyist".
>
>      By 1976, Bill should have been aware that "hobbyist" was out-dated
> Popular Electronics lingo. Anyone running BASIC in 1976 was a "small computer
> user".
>
> Rubywand

I have here beside my keyboard Volume Two of Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer
Calisthenics & Orthodontia "Running Light Without Overbyte" The introduction,
written in 1980, paragraph two starts out, "Microcomputers were still very much
the domain of hobbyists and technology junkies in early 1977."

The first article in the January 1977 issue, titled "A PDP-11-Like, 16 bit, Micro
for the S-100 Bus", closes it's first paragraph with "... which should prove to
be of interest to the more advanced hobbists who have run out of flexibility in
their 8080 systems." There is a letter on pg 15 from CACHE (Chicago Area Computer
Hobby Enthusiasts). The second article is a description and listing of the
Lawrence Livermore Lab's 8080 BASIC, so people could assemble and burn their own
ROMs with it. On page 62 is a notice titled "NEW BOOK FOR COMPUTER HOBBYISTS"

In the February 1977 issue is a letter from Tom Pittman who wrote one of the
first "Tiny BASICs" His fourth paragraph starts with "A quick scan of a couple of
hobby magazines shows typically 40 ads offering computer hardware and no
software, 10 ads offering both hardware and software...."

I could continue, but the point is obvious. Even in 1977 the term "hobbyist"
wasn't (yet) an outdated term referring to computer users. Most people were still
buying computers that they had to assemble themselves, or pay an extra fee to
have it soldered together for them. In vol 2 issue 1 is a letter from LeRoy
Finckle complaining that there was only one computer in the entire country that
could be bought and used by someone who wasn't a hardware enthusiast and who only
knew BASIC, and which would be bought with disk drives. 1977 was still the time
of the pioneers, in both hardware and software, and they were still called
"hobbyists."

Roy