User:Raindolf/sandbox

Guido Sohne
William Guido Sohne (born 23 May 1973 in Accra, Ghana – died 2 May 2008 in Nairobi, Kenya)

1978: Age 5 Guido started to learn reading with the aid of the 24-volume Ladybird Readers. Upon completion, he started reading other Ladybird books covering a wide variety of subjects with the view to introducing the growing child to the ‘store of knowledge’ at his disposal.

1981: Age 8 Having acquired a healthy appetite for reading ‘almost anything’, he was now given a set of Tell Me Why books. These books explained in simple but absorbing manner how things and living beings work. These were fascinating times when he made several ‘discoveries’ through his readings and amazed even grown-ups about his’ knowledge of things’. But he didn’t read only technical books; he also read novels, both classical and contemporary. His mastery of English could be attributed to this activity.

1983: Age 10 It was at this time that he received as a present from his brother in the US an Electronic Set comprising diodes, resistors, circuits, speaker, LED etc with which, on connecting various terminals, all kinds of electronic effects could be generated. The time was now approaching to introduce him to the world of computers.

1986: Age 13 (Form 2) Guido’s first computer was the AMSTRAD PWC8256. This machine had only one floppy drive at 360Kb, no hard drive and ran on CP/M – Computer Program for Microprocessors. Its CPU, a Z80, had a clock speed of 3.4MHz. The computer whose RAM was 256Kb, came with a dot-matrix printer. From the outset, we determined that Guido should learn proper typing which he did using Touch ‘n Go program in 2 weeks and proceeded to learn LocoScript – the word processor that came with the machine. It was this knowledge that enabled him to be hired to teach secretaries part-time during holidays. He also learned a graphics program - Dr Logo - with which he could make simple drawings and sketches, e.g. directions to our house. During this period too, a Mexican computer science student who lived on our street gave him an assignment to convert numbers into words. Simple though it might seem, it turned out to be quite intricate but Guido completed the task satisfactorily using Mallard BASIC.

1988: Age 15 (Form 4) We replaced the old computer with the AMSTRAD PPC512, a DOS machine with 31/2” diskette drive (720Kb) but again without a hard drive. This meant that the computer had to always be booted from the diskettes on start-up and all programs loaded into memory. This computer had a RAM of 512Kb and an 8086 CPU running at 8MHz. Guido had to learn the new MS-DOS (Disk Operating System) keystrokes and commands for every task to be performed – copy, delete, directory, print etc. He started with MS-DOS 4 and went through the various versions up to MS-DOS 6. Among programs Guido learned or used were x86 Assembly Language, QBASIC, Borland’s Turbo Pascal, Debugger and later C. Other software included AmiPro, WordPerfect, MS-Word, Lotus 1-2-3, Borland’s QuattroPro etc.

1991: Age 18 (Lower 6) Graduated from Amstrad to Windows-based Tandon NB386 Notebook Computer with hard drive (30Mb), high-density diskette drive (1.44Mb), 1Mb RAM and an 80386SX CPU with clock speed of 25MHz. Guido joined the Windows environment with version 3.1. He continued with programming languages such as C++, Prolog etc. He also learned Microsoft Publisher with which he computerized his school’s magazine.

1992: Age 19 – Left for Princeton University to study Computer Science. After studying for about 21/2 years, Guido decided that he had learned enough computing science, especially so when he had become ‘addicted’ to the Internet and its immense possibilities for study, research and entertainment.

Guido believed that the study of ‘peripheral subjects’ such as foreign languages (he did French at ‘O’ Level) or discrete mathematics were not absolutely crucial to his needs or purposes. He was, after all, not interested in the academic / theoretical side of computing; he simply wanted to develop and implement his ideas, in as far as these could benefit and positively impact on society as a whole.

This attitude and the fact that, as he put it, “Bill Gates never completed either” finally led him to drop out of college. Indeed, he was convinced that with a computer and an Internet connection, anyone could study anything, anywhere, anytime.

On his return to Ghana early in 1996, he indeed started to implement his vision and ideas. As he was to demonstrate in the years to follow, his non-completion of college did nothing to stop him from attaining a high professional status, accomplishing great goals or being internationally recognized. The same may not necessarily be claimed for many of his colleagues who stayed behind and obtained degrees.