Right around this time I got to go to the bookstore at UCSD and buy a Sun desktop machine. I also bought a shrink-wrapped compiler, a shrink-wrapped Sybase, and a shrink-wrapped Netscape Enterprise Server.

I built a lot of server side javascript web apps in Netscape enterprise server, and a built a windows shell in javascript with netscape (I had to get a code signing certificate to remove the chrome in Netscape). Over 300 public workstations in the libraries ended up running that funky javascript shell (replacing all the green and amber screen terminals).

Writing the server side apps and hacking together that shell is basically what taught me programming. That plus I had to migrate a bunch of perl 4 code to perl 5.