See all articles from TS Bulletin 3-1990
Essay examining whether amateur computer programming has become a niche hobby, comparing it to the historical arc of amateur radio building—mass-market in the 1920s, niche by the 1950s. Harmer surveys the ecosystem supporting amateur programmers: schools and universities (citing the origins of Pascal, FORTRAN, COBOL, UCSD Pascal p-code system, and Japanese LHARC compression utility in academic settings), professional programmers moonlighting (citing dBase III’s NASA origins via Wayne Ratliff), and BBS/user group networks as sources of technical knowledge and public domain code. Concludes that amateur programming serves an outward-looking purpose through its public domain contributions.