Beginning Programming

About the Author

After spending his first two post-college years working for a dead-end corporation that encouraged its employees to use euphemisms to disguise the fact that they were manufacturing nuclear weapons with the potential to wipe out most forms of life on the planet, Wallace Wang decided that his life was meant to be spent doing something more exciting than existing in a corporate culture that stifled freedom and democracy while building missiles ostensibly to protect freedom and democracy. With the thought of escape in his mind, he bought one of the first IBM personal computers on the market — and quickly realized that the accompanying computer manuals were completely incomprehensible.

After deciphering the manuals and learning to master the arcane commands of the ancient MS-DOS version 1.25 operating system, Wallace decided to publish fragments of his notes in a local computer magazine for the amusement of others — and to provide an alternative source of income for his eventual departure from the mentally suffocating environment of the military-industrial complex.

After people began responding favorably to his introductory computer magazine articles, he continued writing more, eventually turning to writing full-time. For the first time, he managed to earn a living in a job that didn’t involve developing something that could blow up people who happen to live in another part of the world.

Today, the author is happily pursuing a dual career in the book publishing industry and the stand-up comedy industry. His eventual goal is to convince people that enjoying yourself while learning is all right. In the meantime, he plans to continue making fun of any idiots and morons who happen to get in his way.

Author’s Acknowledgments

If it weren’t for Matt Wagner and Bill Gladstone at Waterside Productions, I may never have written this book (and someone else may have). That’s why I don’t mind paying these guys 15 percent of the book royalties so that they can afford to buy their groceries.

Additional thanks go to Allen Wyatt (the technical reviewer) for making sure that everything in this book is accurate, and to Cassandra (my wife) for putting up with multiple computers that (from her point of view) seem to spontaneously appear and disappear from the house at random. Each time a computer disappears, a more advanced model appears that promises more speed and hard disk space but still never seems to have more speed or as much room as the previous computer model that it replaced.

A final note of thanks must go to the Chinese and Russians who’ve translated my other books, Microsoft Office For Dummies and Visual Basic For Dummies. The Chinese and Russian editions are the only foreign translations of my books ever to include my previously published references to General Dynamics as a “bomb factory.” Whether translators in other countries purposely omitted this humorous reference or whether it’s just a coincidence that only the Chinese and Russian editions included this reference is unknown.

Still, this fact alone provides an endless source of amusement to think that Chinese and Russian readers are privy to an American joking about his country’s nuclear missile factories, while readers in other countries are not. For that reason alone, the Chinese and Russian translators of my books have my eternal gratitude and blessing, not because they happen to be Chinese or Russian, but because they appear to be able to appreciate a joke.

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