The post that Amir Mehrani wrote on his blog about his first computer took me back to my childhood and the story of buying my own first computer.

Until the end of elementary school, I was a member of the local cultural center and participated in its various classes. When I entered middle school, I wanted to expand this opportunity and joined the Tarbiat Library. Membership wasn’t a problem, but being a boy limited my access, I could only go in, pick a book, and leave. Over time, as the staff got to know me and considering my age, this restriction eased, and I was allowed to stay in the magazine reading room (not the main hall) and read there.

After a while, the books I borrowed caught the attention of Mr. A., the director at the time. One example was Isaac Asimov’s The Largest Planet, which initially caused some frustration because he thought I couldn’t understand the content and was just showing off. But after answering his question about the weight of a liter of gases on Jupiter, that concern vanished.

This meeting sparked many conversations between Mr. A. and me, as he wanted to know about my future plans. At that time, my hobby was tinkering with electronics kits and building things, but I also wanted a computer to access the unlimited resources of the internet that a relative had introduced me to. I wanted to apply the outdated programming books I had seen in the Tarbiat Library and see the results of each exercise. The computer was like a giant electronics kit to me, something that could take me far beyond what I had built before.

Mr. A. promised to help me buy a computer as much as he could and asked me to meet with my father. My father went, accepted a friend of Mr. A.’s installment plan, and I was ready to enter a new phase of my life.

Some time passed finding the various components we needed (really, Mr. A.’s friend), and every night I went to sleep thinking about all the things I would do with this computer and the world that would open up. Finally, the day arrived, and Mr. A. called to say the system was ready. I spent most of that day in a daze, and I don’t remember exactly what happened. But the system arrived at home, and without any prior idea, I started connecting cables by matching their shapes. The feeling when I pressed the power button and heard the fan start was like winning a polar expedition.

The 1.6 GHz CPU, 128 MB RAM, 16 MB graphics card, and 20 GB hard drive with Windows 98 were my first tools to enter this world. My learning speed was such that two weeks later I was installing Windows for my friend, and two months later I mastered the entire Office suite. Visual Basic 6 and Turbo C were my first programming environments. Good times.