Learning to Program

CLARITY: EMERGENT PHENOMENON | Moment Three Hundred Twenty-Four

As a physics major
I was required to learn FORTRAN
in Introduction to Computing.

Like Swim Class
this requirement was changed.
The next semester
C++ was the required language.

Dr. Bauer lectured
from his own blue paperback book
Getting Started with FORTRAN 77.

Sitting quietly
in a large lecture hall,
we learned concepts
algorithms
character sets
data types.

The real action
began to take shape
in the computer lab
with a sign of artificial life:

“Hello, world!”