It's inevitable, as we get older, that we look back on the past with a certain nostalgia. That said, I think that computing in the era when I was growing up, the 1980's, was more fun and interesting than it is now. Personal computers were starting to become common, but were not omnipresent as they are now. They were quite mysterious boxes. An error might throw you into a screen that started displaying hexadecimal with no apparent meaning. Each piece of software had its own interface which you had to learn, since there were really no set standards. For some, there might be a menu-driven interface. For others there might be control keys you used to navigate. Some programs required text commands. Even working with devices that had only