Programming a computer catalogue
My brother and I used to order games from a UK shareware catalogue and have them sent over to Ghana. It would take weeks for the now antique floppy disks to arrive.
I had an idea that, using the programming language BASIC, I could develop a program to list the games we had bought, hand out my program to friends at school, and sell them copies of our games.
I developed the program but the venture never took off.
After nearly five years we left Ghana to return to the UK, but the ability to program software was an invaluable skill a Ghanaian school friend, Osei Poku, taught me. It was pretty cool to be able to play Guns ‘n Roses’ Sweet Child of Mine and edit the code to change the speed - at least to a 15 year old.
(Written January 1st 2009. Republished from Tim's personal blog on startups & small businesses)
