It’s the late 1960s, and refrigerator-size minicomputers have just started arriving at university computing centers across the U.S., says a pilot fish who has just been bitten by the programming bug.

“I tried to get as much hands-on time as possible,” fish says. “The ‘big’ time-shared PDP-8 was only available standalone from about midnight to the start of classes the next morning, so that’s when I could use it and try my luck at writing more than simple BASIC programs.

“Being a college student, the hours were not a problem. What’s sleep anyway?”

The problem, it turns out, is that at 6 am. the custodial staff arrives at the computing center to start in on their morning chores — which includes vacuuming the computer room.

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