I started programming in 1980 and sold my first software in 1983, while I was in middle school. In 1995 I founded One Technology, my first serious software company, which solved operations research problems using artificial life algorithms of my own design.

I have a special fondness for the Commodore PET 2001 and the Apple II on wrote my first lines of code, and the Commodore VIC-20 which was the first computer I owned. Also Franklin Ace 1000, a GRiD laptop, an IBM XT, Mac SE, and an AT&T 3B1 Unix PC by 1989... followed by a great many Macs and PCs — mostly Apple. During the 1900s I programmed in BASIC, Assembly, C, C++, and Unix shell. In the 2000s the number of languages has exceeded my ability to count.

I chair the IT History Society. The record of how computing actually happened is easy to lose and hard to rebuild, and a great many of the people who could tell us are still here to be asked.

From 2014 to 2025 I produced 95 TED Talks. I also created DRAM, a conference series on digital aesthetics.

By day I work with investors and companies on technology: due diligence before an investment, and engineering leadership after it. That work is described at aaronsylvan.com.