About BPCPrograms
Hello! I'm Munawar Bijani, the founder of BPCPrograms! Let me tell you how BPC came around to development. BPC was started in 2002. I met someone on a program which was around at that time called Accessible Chat. These were the days when things like the Braille N Speak and Braille Lite from Freedom Scientific were the top of the line products. This person told me he had created a program that answers questions you ask it; it was written in BASIC. Not QBASIC, but what I call BNS BASIC, an adaptation of the BASIC language for DOS rewritten for the Braille N Speak family of notetakers. He had also provided the source code for this program. I went to his site and downloaded the program and took a look at the source. General programming concepts just clicked with me after that; so, I started hacking away at my first program. I worked at home, in Math class when I was bored, at stores when we were waiting in a checkout line, and in the car! Finally, after compiling, recompiling, and recompiling again, I got my first program developed! This program was called "Site 1.0." It described my then-home page, located at www.anycities.com/mun0009 (yes, BPC started on a free, Anycities server!) I then developed two more programs, Trivia 1.0 and Trivia 1.1, which were general trivia games. But I wanted to go higher--so I went higher, this is how the Unending Adventures were born! First came Unending Adventure 1.0. It was fairly small, but still took me quite a bit of time because I was still getting familiar with "goto" statements, "gosub" statements, etc. Next came Unending Adventure 1.1. This one was also quite small, but you actually had multiple options in some instances. Finally came Unending Adventure 1.2.3! Surprisingly enough, most of this game was written on a train. Some of you have asked me time and time again, "What did you guys do back when travel vehicles didn't offer free wi-fi?" My answer: we either studied, programmed, or socialized! I did the latter two (no student, especially when in middle school, wants to spend their time studying on a train.) By the way, this was a four hour train ride one way. All this happened over the span of two years. I had one person who was actively connecting with me back then. His name was Angel Colon and he was my friend from middle school. When I would develop a program, I would download it into his notetaker using Hyperterminal (remember the terminal days?) He would play it and give me feedback on it. Soon, I put my site (the Anycities one) at the bottom of my Email signature, which gained me some popularity because people were craving for notetaker games. The only ones around at that time were those developed by what used to be Blazie Engineering (Freedom Scientific never developed any games, at least not that I am aware of,) and Daniel Zingaro, who was someone I had met online and who had a real talent for programming. I was then contacted by a good fellow named Graham who offered to port my games over to MS-DOS using QBASIC. By "port," I mean taking the games I had written and converting them to be playable on a computer instead of just a notetaker. I was thrilled! I gave him all my source code and he went to work. We connected pretty well, and he was the person who played a really active role in testing for me. We corresponded on a pretty regular basis, and I was getting more acquainted with the online blind and low vision world (this was so long ago, I hadn't even been introduced to mailing lists until about six months before this time!) The date was still 2002, around Summer time now, so mid-2002 to be precise. Finally, I decided one day to come up with a name for my page instead of just "Programs." This is the exciting part, so stick around! I took a careful look at the situation. I really wanted to make a name for myself, and be known by something other than "that teen making games." Angel Colon was my tester and Graham P. was a tester and also a good friend--he even ported my games to QBASIC. This is how the name "BPCPrograms" came around: Bijani, Pearce, Colon programs! This is how BPC was born--with me, my friend Angel, and a friend I had met online named Graham. Several years later, BPC has evolved in to a true company, with about ten people working on a given project! This is exactly why you will find our motto below. Remember, BPC started with only three members, and has grown in to a full-fledged company. Why? Because we kept at it, and we kept thinking higher. To grow you must change, and BPC is evidence of that. Today, we have led the audio gaming market with a title that has completely revolutionized it--the first ever fully accessible flight simulation game to hit the audio gaming world. This production has come from the same organization that was developing DOS and Braille N Speak games several years ago. When I hire people to work for BPC, I always look for people who have good motivation. You see, a lack of skills can always be solved. But no one can give you motivation. Ever. If you don't know how to program, someone can teach you. But no one can ever teach you how to be motivated. Yes, they can boost your energy temporarily by sweet-talking you and delivering a very moving speech which encourages you to "follow your dream" out of which you come pumped up and ready for action (this text may even do that,) but this newfound energy will soon dissipate, and you will lose your motivation again. When you work for a company, this loss of motivation can bring the whole project down. Don't ever base your motivation on others' perspectives; you can only find that motivation and self-love within yourself, and as long as you have that, no one will be able to touch you. Anyway, before I take up too much space on the site, I would like to thank all of you who have supported me over the years. Yes, I've had my fair share of criticism and "you'll never make it" statements, but those of you who countered those statements mean the world to me. I've told several people that all the support goes a long way, and I really mean that. If it weren't for you, I doubt BPC would have survived because of the general difficulty of learning programming at a time when resources were not adequately available. I don't even think Google existed back then. so thank you all so much!
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