Fairwell to Dr Paul Williams

*EDIT* Apparently this was in draft state from back in March when I wrote it.

Dr Paul L. Williams Jr past away on February 19th 2019 at the age of 88.

I've always enjoyed machines, gadgets, computers and Technology.  Sci-fi movies and TV shows were my favorites.  My dad bought our first computer, an Atari 400, probably in 1980, maybe 1981, I forget now.  I remember trying to program in BASIC (and not being particularly good at it).  It was this marvelous device that I didn't fully understand but loved to interact with.

As the years go by I tinker more and more with computers.  I get reasonably good at it. I learn most things via mimicry.  I see someone else do something, (like the secret key presses on the Apple IIe) and I copy them and figure stuff out by trial and error.  When it came time to graduate high school and choose a major, my decision was easy: Anything with computers.  I ended up choosing UW-Superior.  It was a small program, the professors showed me around for orientation (instead of a student).  Dr Williams was one of my instructors there.

It was harder than I expected.  Up to now, I knew more about computers than almost anyone I knew.  Now I was novice.  The first few classes were programming related and weren't too bad.  I was learning about how to use a computer for more and more advanced things. Then came my first true computer science class.  I'll have to see if I can find an old transcript to find out which class it was, but Dr Williams taught it. It was the first time I was exposed to what a computer was, not how to use it.   Previously RAM, CPUs, bits and bytes were an abstract 'thing' that computers used internally.  In his class we started talking about what those things actually were.  It was like the first time I saw the inside of an internal combustion engine.  The elegance and beauty of it blew me away while the complexity and intricacies scared the crap out of me.  The more I learned the more I realized i didn't know.

I had four different computer science professors that I remember.  Dr Williams was the one I remember the most fondly. He was the only one who struck me as knowing how a computer actually worked electrically.  I remember taking assembly class from Prof. Davis.  He new how to write assembly and taught us how, but I'm not sure he really knew why assembly was the way it was.  Dr Williams did.