Carlos Diogo Homepage

In my University the first three years of any Engineering degree shared most of the subjects. Several aspects of mathematics and physics were covered intensively. Within the subjects i recall Algebra,  Statistics, Mathematical  Analysis, Numerical Methods , Classical Mechanics, Magnetism, Waves and many more.

Besides this , the first three years of engineering also covered the diverse fields of Electrotecnic engineering as Electronics, Microprocessors and Signal Theory of the Electronics and Telecommunications branch, Electric Machines and Energy systems of the  Energy branch and another couple of subjects of the Automation branch.

I was always a quick learner and due to that i was always able to skip the theoretical lessons and focus on the practical sessions of each subject , easily catching up. These quick learning and understanding also allowed me to just study for a couple of days before each exam and achieve good results.

This cocktail of physics and advanced mathematics allowed my analytical and problem solving skill to develop further. The contact with different subjects, providing ‘appetizers’ on several areas besides the pure electronics field together with my constant appeal to learn new things probably gave me the ability to be able to work on several areas and quickly become and expert in each one of them.

The first three years of Engineering were for the sure the hardest ones and in those years my software creator vein  was more or less sleeping

When i was 16 , ruffly one year before i entered my University, my parents bough me a PC. It was a Intel Pentium 166Mhz.  The search for the best computer had probably taken my time for the couple of months before.  The OS by then was the brand new Windows 95  and it represented a huge leap from the old windows 3.1. Floppy disks were still present and CDs were making its debut into the software world.

My main uses for the PC were games. Lots of time was spent playing Quake and other games. The internet was still nowhere to be seen but networking and file sharing  was starting with the BBS. My first modem was a ZOOM 28k and it allowed me to spend hours and hours downloading and uploading files to several bbs on my area. The networking part as fascinating and after some months i created my own BBS with content i had gathered. By then the preferred content were pictures, small movies and games.

New tecnologies always chalenged me and i remember to spend several weeks installing and configuring the BBS . That was the fun part for me. Making it happen.

My first real contact with a PC was with a Olivetti that my dad bought for the office. I was 13 years old. These days the PCs were booting with DOS and then could execute ‘WIN’ and you would have access to the first windows 3.1 operating system.

The computer had no sound device other then the beep and i remember dreaming about the SoundBlaster sound board.  Then the MS Word and Paint i did not use many on that PC.

One of my sisters was studing Chemical engineering and she had a project of building a simulator for Fluid Mechanics.  The simulator was build on QuickBasic and had a command line interface. The program would prompt for inputs and then preform some calculation and generate some charts.

The program was almost fully functional when i had the first contact with it but still had some problems. The existing coding allowed me to learn the basics of programming. By then was hard to get documentations or tutorials and the Internet was not available still in Portugal. However with what i learn i was able to help my sister and solve some of the problems.

The Quick Basic was the first compiler i used. For the first time i could create EXE and not anymore just BAS files that needed the Basic Interpreter. It felt like a big conquest for me

Early years of 1990-2000 i received my first computer. I was 10 years old and were the golden days of Amstrad Spectrum 128k.

The reasons for wanting so much the computer were that all my friends had and it was fun. Lots of games were available and those games kept me busy for lots and lots of afternoons. The Load “” was the first operation i learned.

Soon after i started playing around with the Basic interpreter  that came with and started coding small programs. My first one was probably a Christmas tree that blinked and played some tunes.  My first coding was on the direction on drawing and sounds ,maybe because the results were more immediate.

This computer kept me busy for several years till the first year of the PC.