[Coco] Coco Newby

[Dennis Bathory-Kitsz]

At 10:58 AM 12/2/03 -0800, Mike Warns wrote:
>Unfortunately, if one can't get on the same wavelength
>as an author the fact that he wrote most of the books
>on a subject can make it hard, as one keeps bumping
>against the same barriers.  I had better luck with
>your book than with Bill's.

Thanks for that.

I knew nothing about computers when I started on these machines in late
1977. I hadn't come up through the minicomputer world, or through some
engineering or accounting programming languages. I knew my way around the
analog world, but not digital. I kept a kind of 'public journal' of
discovery that began with my 'Updates' in 1979. I mailed the Updates --
things I'd discovered that were interesting and not documented -- to people
who sent me postcards. These Updates grew into articles, and then into
books. So my readers learned stuff almost at the same pace that I did ...
and I made my share of mistakes, as well (as those who tried to build the
first generation of my CoCo video interface can attest). I don't think Bill
Barden made mistakes like that, because his knowledge was so solid; I
learned the most from him and Steve Ciarcia. The only disadvantage to solid
knowledge is that you tend to forget what you didn't once understand --
since my writing was so close to the moment of discovery, I tended to
recall those steps. racing up behind me as they were. :)

Dennis