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John Naylor

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Your first ever paid programming experience?

For me it's a toss up between two possibles (I can't remember which was first).

It was either getting a command line (MS DOS) thing that controlled printers and output text from files to your printer being published as a handy utility on one of those disks we used to get taped to the front cover of a magazine (Might have been PC World I can't remember. What was the one with 'The Bugs' cartoon near the back page?) or, a crossword solving application (also DOS based written in Borland Turbo C) that let you put blanks and letters then gave you all possible solutions or allowed you to figure out anagrams. I was quite proud of that one at the time, I used upper case letters for actual letters then lower case (and special characters) for compression - so 'G' was a G but 'g' was 'ING'. I still have the source code for the latter :)

I used to get people sending me a cheque for £5 so they could receive, in return through the post, a floppy disk with a version that allowed any length of characters in a word rather than the restricted 6 that I'd set.
 
It was an accounting package I wrote in Visual Basic for "DOS" (not windows).
 
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My first paid-programming-experience was 1992, It was a shareware MS DOS Drawing Application.. with the name GDraw, it was using vectors and saving every shape in a text file like a csv...

0001,anote,aint,Line,X1,Y1,X2,Y2
0002,anote,aint,Circle,...
0003,anote,aint,Box,...
0004,"Hi this my text",12,Text,...

Something like CorelDraw but mine... with unlimited undo because vectors shapes... also sent in a Greek-PC-Magazine for adding it... i had the luck selling "1" package for 500drachmas (today <2€)...

The code wrote at QuickBasic... and must be into an old 5.25 floppy disk... that may be not working :-( and if works not having Floppy Disk Drive for it... only for 3.5"

Then after 1-2 years wrote my first custom project in QB ofcourse for Money-Cheques with my Custom GRID-Columns... sold for 100,000 drachmas (~300 euro).. after all I was student those money was enough for me !
 
Magma said:
My first paid-programming-experience was 1992, It was a shareware MS DOS Drawing Application.. with the name GDraw, it was using vectors and saving every shape in a text file like a csv...

0001,anote,aint,Line,X1,Y1,X2,Y2
0002,anote,aint,Circle,...
0003,anote,aint,Box,...
0004,"Hi this my text",12,Text,...

Something like CorelDraw but mine... with unlimited undo because vectors shapes... also sent in a Greek-PC-Magazine for adding it... i had the luck selling "1" package for 500drachmas (today <2€)...

The code wrote at QuickBasic... and must be into an old 5.25 floppy disk... that may be not working :-( and if works not having Floppy Disk Drive for it... only for 3.5"

Then after 1-2 years wrote my first custom project in QB ofcourse for Money-Cheques with my Custom GRID-Columns... sold for 100,000 drachmas (~300 euro).. after all I was student those money was enough for me !
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at unlimited... let's say 32K or lower because mem-limits ! :)
 
First paid job was 1982 CBASIC CP/M

Second paid job was 1984 VAX-11/750 started as programmer, became system administrator the following year

Still got the manual (sort of) :

VAX BASIC pocket reference.png
 
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In the mid1980's I wrote a midi patch manager for the Atari ST in C using Midi bulk dump. It was my first experience with a non BASIC language and Midi. At the time a friend of mine was selling patches for various synths on cartridge and offered my patch manager on 720kb floppy disk to his customers. Needless to say I can't remember much about C these days.
 
In 1993 i wrote a Tool for Atari ST(e)/TT to convert adresses in CSV-Format from the old short postcodenumber in germany (4 digits) to the newly used 5 Digit postcodes.
The tool did convert the CSV and replaces the old Postcode with the correspondending new Postcodes based on the adress street+town.

The Tool and the Database behind was delivered on three 3,5" Floppydisks (something around 720kb room on each). It was a 1800kb Textdatabase with all Street and Town of Germany which contains the old and new postcodes.

Users with no harddisc needed to change from floppy1->2->3 while the convertingproces was running.
"Please insert Floppy 2 and press Enter"...

The "Setup" on 1 Floppy was able to copy the tool and database from the floppydiscs to the HDD so you could run the tool from hdd without the need to change the Floppy while converting. Running the Tool from hdd was a lot faster for sure than using the Floppydiscs :D

The success of this Tool was - basically - the start of my programmingcareer.
 
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I never got my hands on an Atari ST which always irked me as they looked so amazing! I always wanted to play about with the MIDI interface as my brother was a budding synthesizer musician at the time so we always had keyboards and drum machines etc about the house.
 
I remember that it was a toss up between the Atari and Amiga. Shortly afterwards Cubase and Band in a box were released on Atari, so it was the right choice at the time.
 
stevel05 said:
I remember that it was a toss up between the Atari and Amiga. Shortly afterwards Cubase and Band in a box were released on Atari, so it was the right choice at the time.
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I think I'd started down the PC route by then (hence my own first paid apps). They were nowhere near as powerful as the Atari / Amiga but there appeared to be a steady progression of their use happening in businesses and my father in law bought one and had me write a number of accounting type systems on it, a VAT system, book keeping from incomplete records, an application to print out a nicely formatted profit & loss statement for his clients etc.

I remember it having 2 x 3.5" 360k floppy drives that sounded like they would shake my desk to pieces every time they were accessed! :)
 
ahh nice topic!
In my case, my first paid job in my area (electronics):

I was at university at that time.. one day waiting in the bus stop (from one city to another city)
I meat a person who was an electronic engineer, because he was super busy asked me if I'd like to design a converter 220Vac to 12Vdc not using a transformer..
it was my first "professional project" that worked in the real life :) and my first payment developing electronic projects!! :P
 
f0raster0 said:
I meat a person who was an electronic engineer, because he was super busy asked me if I'd like to design a converter 220Vac to 12Vdc not using a transformer..
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So what did you do?

Did you use a bridge, cap and a resistor who's value was calculated based on the expected load current?
 
JohnC said:
So what did you do?

Did you use a bridge, cap and a resistor who's value was calculated based on the expected load current?
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yes diodes, big cap and zener, I don't remember doing "calculations", probably I did some plus just try :P always hand-on ahah

it was a project for power lamps in a warehouse. I don't remember much, the crazy part for me was getting a project and getting paid for it, until that moment I was thinking you have to finish the university to get a job.
 
John Naylor said:
I never got my hands on an Atari ST which always irked me as they looked so amazing
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The cool/good thing on the Atari was a 100Hz Monitor (Black and White though) which was really Amazing in the 90s
 
For me ATARIST was what the MAC is today.. had a perfect OS, nice UI, and do the job had to... nothing more, nothing less...

AMIGA was nice for GAMES... and good as Drum Machine... also was good as Titler for TV Stations too.. but didn't have the quality of ATARI ST...

PCs was only for business the old years... today we can say that is a Multimedia device... (too late)
 
I can't remember the last time I was paid for coding never mind the first time ? ?:eek:

It was either a very simple MS-Dos batch file menu system so the office staff at a travel agency could switch between word processor, spreadsheet, calendar, whatever or... it was Amiga stuff of which I did a lot back then and some is still on Aminet such as:

SchematiCAD
1673627075335.png

That was in 97 but I'd been coding since the 80s and had some of my stuff featured in such magazine greats as Amiga Format, CU Amiga and.... I kid you not.. Machine Knitting Monthly ?
 
MikeH said:
Amiga Format, CU Amiga
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I remember those magazines.
They were not available in Italy at general newsstands so I had to go to Milano where there was a newsstand that was selling foreign magazines.
I used to try some of the programs published on the floppies on my Amiga. Who knows - maybe I tried some of yours? :)
 
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