When I was 15 my Dad bought a TRS-80 Color Computer from the local Radio Shack. I was an extreme underachiever at the time, and I think his hope was this new toy would spark my interest.

It worked.

I fell in love with that little 4K box. By the end of the year I was writing BASIC games for it, and soon afterwards I was publishing articles in Hot CoCo and Rainbow Magazine. Next I taught myself assembler and began selling games like “Moon Runner,” a knock-off of the arcade hit “Moon Patrol.”

Now that Radio Shack is on its last legs, I just want to say “thanks, Radio Shack!” Thirty years later I enjoy writing software more than ever, and that underpowered TRS-80 is where it all started for me.