It’s standard fare that the first program anybody writes when working in a new language is one that quaintly emits the words “Hello World” to the screen.

(Though, to be fair, given the state of things right now, that might be better described as ominous.)

Although this isn’t the first program I’ve ever written nor am I working in a language I’ve not previously used, it is still my first foray into decompiling existing code, so I’m keeping this post title as a bit of a wink and a nod.

In a house with a mother who had moved to the States from post-WW2 Italy, there was no escaping growing up Roman Catholic.

As such, Easter Sunday was one of the two big religious-themed Holidays.

Baskets were set out to greet my brothers and myself that morning, each filled with the usual assortment of chocolate and marshmallow-based confections, laid out in a bed of neon-green bed of plastic grass.

But this day, there was something else propped up inside the basket.

MicroLeague Baseball

I had never heard of this before, but then I was still only 10-years old and didn’t yet have access to the internet, computer magazines or game stores.

We had only recently acquired our first home PC – an IBM PCjr.

My computer gaming experience up to that point was limited to rudimentary DOS games.

However, at this point I already had several years under my belt of an obsession with APBA Baseball, inherited from my older brother.

Already a fascination with baseball and data was cementing itself into my brain and my parents must have seen this while doing some Easter shopping in a computer gaming store and thought, yes, this checked all the boxes.

As was often the case, they were not wrong.