>N-BASIC/N-80 BASIC (1983-1985) -> Pascal (1989) ->
>Common Lisp / Scheme (T) (1990) -> Scheme (T) (1991) ->
>C (1993) -> Scheme (T) (1994) -> Tutorial-D
>(in _Introduction to Database Systems, Seventh Edition_ by C. J. Date)
>(2000) -> Oracle SQL / PL/SQL (c. 2000-2001) -> Java (c. 2001) ->
>MIT/GNU Scheme (2005) / PLT Scheme (2005-now) ->
>Ruby (2007-2008) -> PLT Scheme / GHC Haskell (now)

>I first because fascinated with the idea of a computer program after
>seeing a demonstration of an application at a personal computer show
>in circa 1981 for interactive computer music on an Apple ][ j-plus computer
>(see
>http://www.apple2world.jp/apple2/COL/MapItems/apple2jplus/apple2jplus.html
>(in Japanese)) (at the Sumitomo Sankaku Building in Shinjuku, Tokyo). The
>application involved a user playing music on a music keyboard, and vertical color
>bar graphs on a horizontal line appearing in real time in response to the notes
>played on a color monitor. The idea of a computer exhibiting a form of
>artificial intelligence by responding to user input in real time according to
>a computer program seemed fascinating at the time.
>
>Also interesting at that show was a lunar lander program, which I think
>was on a black-and-white Commodore VIC-1001 (see "History of Commodore
>Computers" at http://oldcomputers.net/vic20.html, for Commodore Japan for
>1980) (known as the VIC-20 (see http://oldcomputers.net/vic20.html) in the
>United States, where it was released a year later), in which the player's
>character would occasionally fall into a ditch while running across the screen,
>which I found extremely humorous.
>
>After that, I first started out in programming in 1983 with N-BASIC on
>the NEC PC-8001 (see
>http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/personal/0001.html and
>http://park10.wakwak.com/~pinevill/image/nec/PC8001.JPG) (I was a poor
>student at the time, so I had no choice but to code on coding sheets and
>manually to enter my code in computers line by line at computer showrooms).
>I planned to write and sell my own computer program in order to purchase my
>own computer; alas, this plan later failed miserably (my N-80 BASIC pocketbook
>accounting program, written on a PC-8001 mk II (see
>http://park10.wakwak.com/~pinevill/image/nec/PC8001mkII_1.JPG), wouldn't
>sell), and as a result, I was prohibited from programming between 1985 and
>1989, when I finally entered college.
>
>Later, I became exposed to the Apple Macintosh personal computer (see
>http://applemuseum.bott.org/), and felt excited at its prospects for multimedia
>applications. This is when I first became interested in multimedia applications
>for personal computers.
>
>Just before entering college, in March of 1989, I visited a computer exhibition
>at Tokyo Dome featuring the Fujitsu FM TOWNS "hyper-media personal
>computer" (see http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/personal/0029.html).
>This computer was essentially a Japanese counterpart to the Macintosh, geared
> toward starting a home-use-focused multimedia-based personal computer
>movement in Japan, to counter the business-use-focused PC-9801 personal
>computers (see http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/personal/0011.html)
>from NEC. Exposure to the FM TOWNS at this event greatly strengthened my
>interest in multimedia applications for personal computers, especially on home-use
>entertainment applications focusing on the use of high-speed three-
>dimensional color computer graphics and stereo sound in a virtual reality
>environment.
>
>Then in college, I became exposed to Scheme in computer science. I was also
>briefly exposed to Pascal, Common Lisp, and C, but greatly preferred Scheme
>because of the emphasis on higher-order programming techniques, which I
>found greatly helped me to concentrate on what I wanted to program,
>rather than how to program it. For similar reasons, I also became interested
>in Haskell, to which I was also briefly exposed. However, I did not have many
>opportunities to study Haskell at that time, because the language was not
>used in the courses that I actually took (as opposed to audited). I also took
>a course in Formal Semantics of Programming Languages, which I found to be
>one of the most interesting courses in computer science. In particular, the
>discussions on the operational and denotational semantics of the lambda calculus
>were especially interesting.
>
>One difficulty that I had in sustaining my interest in computer science was the
>lack of any focus on multimedia applications. While functional programming was
>very interesting from a theoretical viewpoint, most functional programming
>courses lacked any focus on multimedia applications.
>
>After graduation with a Bachelor of Science in computer science, since I was
>more interested in the theory of programming languages than in business
>applications, I looked for ways of using this background at work, but
>unfortunately, most careers in industry did not use any of this background. I
>was very exhausted from years of lack of sleep in conquering math phobia and
>discrete mathematics in eventually passing the course in design and analysis of
>algorithms, and did not want to proceed immediately to even more years of even
>less sleep in graduate school. So, I decided to pursue my study of programming
>language theory as a hobby, and eventually to find a way somehow to earn
>income without having to spend time in work (perhaps through writing a book or
>creating a popular Web site with income from advertisements), so that I could
>concentrate on studying programming language theory full-time as a hobby, while
>simultaneously searching for a way to integrate this interest with my other interests
>in virtual reality and multimedia applications.
>
>Currently, I work as a Japanese->English translator/interpreter at a patent office
>in Tokyo, where I translate patents for computer technology while studying
>programming language theory whenever I have free time during the week after
>work.