The people who taught me

Laurie Bisman

Laurie bought the first TRS-80 microcomputer sold in New Zealand — in 1978, for about $1,500, a demonstration model he collected from the agent. Sixteen kilobytes of memory, data on cassette tape, and a machine that “did virtually nothing” by today’s measure.

He spent the next three decades in the Christchurch Personal Computer Users Group, which ran from 1985 until it disbanded in 2009, and taught anyone who turned up how a machine actually works. The origami came from the same instinct: a thing worth making is worth folding carefully.

He taught my first programming classes at Vision College. He has since passed away.

Facts about the TRS-80 and the PCUG are from The Press, 15 June 2009.

Jeffrey Hong

Jeffrey taught programming at Vision College in Christchurch in the early 2000s. The college has since retired the course — but it ran then, and I was in the room.

He was technically strong and patient with it, and the habit of proving a thing works rather than describing it as working comes from that class.

Why this page exists

Small tools, one job each, no nagging, no upsell, no watching what a visitor does. That standard was set by two programmers in Christchurch who never had a marketing department, and it is the only reason this business builds the way it does.