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How did you start coding?
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For the ZX spectrum I used to get a magazine like today's PC Gamer I guess, it had code samples that you typed out to do really basic functions. I'd spend hours copying the lines of code only to find it didn't work because of several dozen typo's. There were also plenty of occasions were the actual magazine contained the typo and the following week a correction was submitted.
After leaving school I was lucky to get an apprenticeship with an automotive parts manufacturer and got interested in automation and PLC coding.
The funny thing is that at school I hated being taught French and German and to this day can't speak any language other than English and 1 to 10 in French and German, maybe even introduce myself at a push. It just didn't interest me!
Yet when you think about it, coding is in itself another language and I'm more than happy to study that, infact you could say that I'm pretty fluent in several languages now
After leaving school I was lucky to get an apprenticeship with an automotive parts manufacturer and got interested in automation and PLC coding.
The funny thing is that at school I hated being taught French and German and to this day can't speak any language other than English and 1 to 10 in French and German, maybe even introduce myself at a push. It just didn't interest me!
Yet when you think about it, coding is in itself another language and I'm more than happy to study that, infact you could say that I'm pretty fluent in several languages now
I had the 48K Speccy @RandomCoder. I too used to buy the magazines back in the day and then spend hours and hours and hours manually typing in the code only to realise that either the code was incorrect or I typed in the code incorrectly in the first place, and then I would spend days trying to get a simple maze game etc to work. What used to really pissed me off was when the Speccy magazines used to release the next editions with the modified code to get the previous weeks code working correctly in the first place.
Oh boy, those were the days lol...
Oh boy, those were the days lol...
And does anyone actually know why we were subjected to a screen full of psychedelic coloured lines and that screeching sound when loading games???
In the 8ies there were "some strange typewriters with televisions" (VC 20 or so) in some stores. One day a guy was typing "commands" and the "typewriter" showed colours and text's and did other things. I asked him what he was doing and since then I'm in.
A friend got a ZX81 but my parents refused to buy such an expensive "game". 1 year later (after a hard fight with them) I got an Atari 400 for Xmas. Still a toy to them.
My history:
Atari 400
Commodore C128
Amiga 500
Amiga 2000
Amiga 1200
PC's
I still miss "the good old times" spending with my old machines
A friend got a ZX81 but my parents refused to buy such an expensive "game". 1 year later (after a hard fight with them) I got an Atari 400 for Xmas. Still a toy to them.
My history:
Atari 400
Commodore C128
Amiga 500
Amiga 2000
Amiga 1200
PC's
I still miss "the good old times" spending with my old machines
1982: Olivetti M20 (Z8000-family CPU, 128KB RAM, 2 floppies, 320x200 graphics and PCOS OS with Basic8000 in ROM)
A "powerful" machine but a lot of space to envy sprites and those game-magics done on Commodores and the like!
Hours spent on code-copying from magazines and year after year of books, tons of books.
udg
A "powerful" machine but a lot of space to envy sprites and those game-magics done on Commodores and the like!
Hours spent on code-copying from magazines and year after year of books, tons of books.
udg
eheh..it wasn't mine! But I had the opportunity to work on that great machine and have also enough time on it for experimenting and learning.
How to forget the use of "peek" and "poke" instructions to directly access RAM and bypass the protection scheme used on some programs?
Or the building of a personalized copy of the OS, assembling just the needed pieces since the scarcity of disk space?
Then it came the Olivetti M24 (8086 CPU 256KB RAM) and BASIC soon left place to my preferred language ever: Pascal.
Well, I used Fortran, Prolog, Lisp and a few others but that miner on Borland's ads let me move from the three-steps process (editing, compiling and linking) MS Pascal demanded to the beginning of a new programming era. And we had MS DOS with its interrupts to play with..
How to forget the use of "peek" and "poke" instructions to directly access RAM and bypass the protection scheme used on some programs?
Or the building of a personalized copy of the OS, assembling just the needed pieces since the scarcity of disk space?
Then it came the Olivetti M24 (8086 CPU 256KB RAM) and BASIC soon left place to my preferred language ever: Pascal.
Well, I used Fortran, Prolog, Lisp and a few others but that miner on Borland's ads let me move from the three-steps process (editing, compiling and linking) MS Pascal demanded to the beginning of a new programming era. And we had MS DOS with its interrupts to play with..
and with this very simple line you made me realise how old I am!My uncle used to make simple games, such as "Hangman" for the ZX Spectrum back in the late 80's. When I was 11, back in 1994, he taught me BASIC (Turbo Basic) and my life changed ever since.
I too started with Spectrum++, doing some BASIC then some assembler... then the coding languages evolved almost as fast as the computers themselves BUT... not my wallet, so for a few years I was out of the loop. Them came office 2003 with VBA and I did some quite interesting spreadsheet automation. Then I bought an IPAQ, from Compaq, wich run on WinMob 6.1 and already had fingerprint scanner...it was because of that device that I looked into software creation once again, and found Basic4Ppc and EREL.
I remember the first PC we had as a family. It ran windows 3.1 but I forget the make and model. What I do remember is accidentally deleting a file which then prevented the PC from booting. I was only about 11 at the time. I remember it so well because my mum then spent over 4 hours on the phone to tech support being told how to restore the system. After that I was made to back up the system to FLOPPY DISCS!!! It took over 30 floppies and a hell of a long time. I'll never forget that lesson!
TI994A and moved up to a C64. Then a C128. Ran a BBS named "The Junction Box" in Houston Texas for some years running LTK (Lt Kernal) SCSI hard drives. I had a land line and a 1200 baud modem (1670) that eventually changed along the way to up to 56k. Too bad I only had 1 line connection at a time. It was fun though being a "Sysop".
Then a C128. Ran a BBS named "The Junction Box" in Houston Texas for some years running LTK (Lt Kernal) SCSI hard drives. I had a land line and a 1200 baud modem (1670) that eventually changed along the way to up to 56k. Too bad I only had 1 line connection at a time. It was fun though being a "Sysop". 
Started on an HP-85 to control racks of test equipment over HPIB (IEEE-488).
After that, a friend and I built Apple II clones from kits. I also had a ZX someplace in there as well as a home brewed Z80 system. Then I moved to PC using VB6 and later Visual Studio. I also do embedded PIC code in C. I am actually a hardware guy that picked up software to make the hardware work.
After that, a friend and I built Apple II clones from kits. I also had a ZX someplace in there as well as a home brewed Z80 system. Then I moved to PC using VB6 and later Visual Studio. I also do embedded PIC code in C. I am actually a hardware guy that picked up software to make the hardware work.
D
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I started in 1991 with the Psion Series 3, subsequently kammen Psion Series 3a, 3c Psion Series and Psion Series 5mx pro, I have still.
From 1995 on SGI workstation (Unix) with shell script (of course only at work, is too expensive for private people).
From 2004 then with VB6, VB.Net and from 2007 with B4ppc.
From 1995 on SGI workstation (Unix) with shell script (of course only at work, is too expensive for private people).
From 2004 then with VB6, VB.Net and from 2007 with B4ppc.
Well, it doesn't matter how long you started, it only matters what you've learned so far!I fill like a stranger here, everybody grow up with a computer and start coding very early in his life.
7 years ago i didnot knew what a string was or a integer, but i see that everybody here knew that allready in the 90s
Surprisingly, I started in spring 1984, buying a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K.
The first steps took me through the sample programs of the "Horizons" cassette delivered with the computer.
After that I spend hours of hours typing in listings from various computer magazines. They could be quite long!
If they were written in basic, there was a big chance to understand how the work.
But more and more they were written in machine code so you had to type in tons of numbers, not knowing what comes out...
specci48
The first steps took me through the sample programs of the "Horizons" cassette delivered with the computer.
After that I spend hours of hours typing in listings from various computer magazines. They could be quite long!
If they were written in basic, there was a big chance to understand how the work.
But more and more they were written in machine code so you had to type in tons of numbers, not knowing what comes out...
specci48