"In the early 1980s, I spent much of my spare time in video arcades and on the Atari 2600 home console. It blew my mind when I heard that a kid up the street had a computer and it could be used to "program his own" video games. I quickly read a book and started programming regularly on a display TI 99/4A at Kmart. I couldn't believe that I could make this machine do whatever I wanted! Eventually, I scrounged up enough money to get the cheapest home computer (TS 1000 with 2k memory), and when I turned 16, I worked lousy food service jobs all summer to buy a Commodore 64. This allowed me write all kinds of programs, both in BASIC and machine language, with my favorite still being to make video games. At the same time, this activity, along with some inspiring teachers, gave me enough confidence to go from being a terrible student in high school to being the top student in every subject. This required a huge amount of work and determination. I think this made me not very popular among some people who came from more educated and wealthy families."
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Steven M. LaValle
Steven M. LaValle (born 1968 in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American computer scientist, and a professor in the Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Oulu. He was also an early founder and head scientist of Oculus VR until it was acquired by Facebook in 2014. He is best known for his work on rapidly exploring random trees (RRTs), the Oculus Rift, and his book, Planning Algorithms, one of the most highly cited texts in the field.
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