I studied for a degree in Applied Computing at the University of East Anglia from October 1990 to June 1993. We used a variety of computer systems there including DEC VAX and UNIX but most of the course work was done using various Apple Macintosh systems.
During my first year at university I used the Internet for the first time. Although the World Wide Web had just come into existence I don’t recall ever using it. Usenet was the main reason for using the internet back then.
The Applied Computing syllabus was much more “real world” than traditional Computer Science degrees. The saying was that people who took Computer Science learned to write compilers whilst those who took Applied Computing learnt to use compilers. I particularly enjoyed courses on User Interface design.
For my third year project I chose a project investigating text compression methods. This was quite interesting as I had to find and implement as many compression algorithms as possible.