Interview

Jim Weaver

Jim Weaver now works for IBM. He’s been a Java Champion, developer, and evangelist for many companies over many years. He has travelled around the world and gone to many places. But right now, Jim is the quantum computing man.

Q: Can you tell us where your career started?

A: In the early days, I went to school for computer technology but then dropped out due to the pressures of life: wanting to get married and start a family, and I thought I could make more money in the restaurant industry. I put the dream of being a computer scientist on hold and went eight years in the restaurant industry, but became increasingly unhappy. This was in the 1970s, a long time ago.

But as I was in that industry then and I had a TRS-80 level 1, so I decided to go ahead and create the first ever restaurant drive-through ordering point-of-sale system, because I wanted to sell that and buy a model 3.

I created an assembly language in Z80 – dialogue 80. If...