"Hello World"

It was 1988.

I sat in front of a large keyboard with a monochrome display and a flashing cursor on a dark screen with green letters.

I gingerly typed: “Hello World” and then pressed the Return button on the keyboard.

This was my first experience in front of a computer system. I was attending boarding school in India and at that time there were no formal computer labs or stations.

In fact, there was no internet, no Microsoft Windows, no Google.

The computer responded to my request with a large amount of green colored text: it was an error message.

The term Hello World meant nothing to it!

But this small chain of events started something very special inside me – a yearning to learn everything I could about computer systems. I read every programming language book that I could get my hands on and started a passionate journey that would run a lifetime.

I clearly remember remarking with my science professor in school, “This is so much fun, why is everyone not programming?”

His answer, “Not everyone finds computers to be as exciting as you do... Pravin...you may have found your calling!”

37 years later – I have no doubt in my mind that he was right.