Albert Wenger

Well, it was a computer science thing and you had to solve a lot of problems in round one and then more difficult problems in round two.

And then there was a final round, which was an oral exam.

And I don't remember any of the details.

Interesting.

I just remember writing a lot of code for it.

And it was a lot of fun.

um they were the ones who turned me on to it they were incredibly supportive so um i ran across it in our school um we had uh sort of a very early um 6502 based computer there and then i had the great luck of uh in the small village that i lived in there was a nearby computer science student who kind of really took an interest in me and he gave me all of his stuff and um

Collectively, we convinced my parents to first buy me a Texas Instruments 59A programmable calculator, and then subsequently an early Apple II, which I still have.

It actually sits in my office.

It was a great computer to learn on.

Well, I wound up studying both economics and computer science, and I didn't really actually fully know why.

I think there was something in the back of my mind that suggested that I was going to study economics to learn something about business, maybe.

By the way, don't do that.

Economics has not all that much to say about business.

But I kind of did it.

And then I was looking for a topic that would satisfy both the computer science department and the economics department.

I should hasten to add, in the end, only the economics department signed up on my thesis.

I couldn't get the two professors to ever really talk to each other.

And so in the end, I had to kind of pick one.

And so for the thesis, I picked economics, even though I did a lot more computer science work than economics work while I was there.