Lee esta historia en español aquí.
“My parents had an old computer at home [in Spain]. It was called a Commodore 64.
“It was one of those computers that used cassette tapes to load programs and games, and my brother and I used to play with that computer. He was older than me. As he entered the commands, I would just sit by his side watching him. I was very curious about why those were the commands and not something else. Why did he have to write specifically that and what would happen if I changed a number?
“When I was around seven years old, I found the manual for the computer at home. I started reading it, and it just made sense. So I just devoured that manual and I learned to program the computer.
“When I was nine, I joined a different school and they had programming classes in the curriculum. They taught a different programming language from the one that I had learned.
“It just made sense to me. I understood how the computer worked and it was magical that I could just tell the computer exactly what to do.
“And [my career] all came from that. The last time I was home, I found a little note that I had written when I was a thirteen-year-old kid. It said, ‘My dream job in the future is to be a programmer.'”
— Dr. Ivan Perez Dominguez, Senior Research Scientist, KBR Wyle Services, LLC, NASA’s Ames Research Center
Image Credit: NASA / Dominic Hart
Interviewer: NASA / Thalia Patrinos