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Being dumped straight into a BASIC interpreter after boot was huge to get kids interested in computers. ZX Spectrum was that way, and it is the reason I am a co
by rdtsc 10y ago
Being dumped straight into a BASIC interpreter after boot was huge to get kids interested in computers. ZX Spectrum was that way, and it is the reason I am a computer programmer today.
It wasn't much code but you had to write a one-liner at least:
LOAD ""
Then you figure, "What other stuff is there?". Oh you could modify memory to get infinite lives in games and such so you find out about PEEK and POKE. You could go as advanced as you wanted. Wrote my own assembly interpreter. There was a C compiler, a Pascal one. If it crashed, had load everything from tape again.
I remember writing and selling my first program when I was 13. My friend's dad ran an semi-legal broadcasting company showing dubbed American movies to a few apartment blocks in the area, so I wrote a program to display the schedule and movie summaries before movies started. As payment I took a cassette tape with music on it, probably something like 2Unlimited or similar ridiculous thing. No regrets though...
- stevekemp 10y ago30 years later I still remember: POKE 23659,0 I got my start on the ZX Spectrum, as you say hacking games for infinite lives. First of all cracking the tape-based protection system (bleeplock, speedlock, softlock, movieload etc), then the games themselves. I guess I was lucky in that a lot of these protection systems were evolving as I was working on them. Jumping in to the more advanced system without having experience of naive protections that were available even six months beforehand would have been impossible for me.
- rdtsc 10y agoThe one I remember besides LOAD "" is RANDOMIZE USR 0 Also come to think of it, my ZX Spectrum (a Soviet clone of it really) was probably the reason I learned English. All the games and programs were in English, wanted to devour all that info so I learned a new language as a side-effect.