Malcolm Arthur McLean - Professional Profile

I started programming when we were taught Basic on the Commodore Pet at school, and was immediately hooked. But my parents were not generous with money, and it was a while before I saved up enough money to buy a second-hand ZX81. Then a friend gave me "Machine Code on your ZX81" by Toni Baker (not "Tony", a lady), and that book changed my life, because it enabled me to master something that most adults couldn't do. And I realised the power of good textbooks and self study. I have written two books on programming in consequence.

Then I want to Oxford to study English Literature, and programming came to an end, except for a brief course on Snobol, and statistical analysis of grammar words (words like "and" and "he"). But the expected job with the Civil Service did not materialise, I needed to earn a living somehow, and so it was to games programming that I turned. But I was never entirely happy as a game programmer. Whilst I enjoy programming games, I'm not so fond of playing them, except for Dungeons and Dragons style games. And for a games programmer, that's a big handicap.

I've got other interests aside from programming, and after I had collected a big pile of cash from games programming, I decided to spend it on doing a second degree, at Leeds University, in biology. That then led naturally to a PhD in computational biochemistry, working on the protein folding problem, and that turned me into a really good programmer.

However there's only one faculty position for every 10 PhDs, and I was one of the unlucky nine, and so I found a job doing graphics programming. Which I kept until unfortunately ill health forced me to give up work. And I am now a full time hobby programmer.

And my main project is Baby X and its attendant subsystems.