One famous anniversary is the 25th anniversary of the GNU project, which happens today.
One much less famous 25th anniversary will happen three days from now, on Sept. 30, 2008. This is the best choice for an official starting day of the Israeli TDD Project.
On Friday Sept. 30, 1983, I at last went to the computer shop, plucked down my money and bought my Commodore 64 home computer. This model was chosen because it supported software-defined fonts, and because it had a cheaper brother, known as VIC-20.
My game plan was to use the Commodore 64 to develop software for both VIC-20 and Commodore 64. This software was to serve as terminal/chat program, which supports textual communication in Hebrew. At the time I already had a 300bps modem connected to an ADM 3A terminal, which belonged to my employer at the time, and which I used to connect to my employer’s computer systems and monitor jobs, which ran overnight.
When I returned home with my spanking new computer, I found in my mailbox a letter, which took 23 days to reach me. The letter was from Susan Bullowa, who subsequently partnered with me in the project. It took us a while to meet, but when we met, it turned out that she has a lot of useful information which complements my own information. And on the other hand, I had in my possession technical information and experience, which complemented hers.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
