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I spent many, many hours with my family's TI-99/4A. I think my parents got it from Radioshack, as we had a Realistic tape deck to store programs with it. It was

I spent many, many hours with my family's TI-99/4A. I think my parents got it from Radioshack, as we had a Realistic tape deck to store programs with it. It was the base model with the speech synthesizer. It was the first computer I had ever used, and learned to program in BASIC at around 6 or 7 years old. I don't think I would be interested in programming and electronic circuits (and by extension, electronic music composition) if it wasn't for that early exposure. This is a great demo to see. You almost never hear of the 99/4A anymore.

DigitalJack 10y ago
Similar story here. Although I didn't get into programming until I got an Apple //e a few years later. I remember typing in a program on the 99/4A (a game called downhill ski or something like that) from BYTE magazine, or some such magazine. I remember the pain of debugging typos... The hours it took typing it in. I was expecting something like one of the cartridge games to pop out. I was quite disappointed with the fact that it was ascii, the character was a > or < sign, and the trees were asterisks. All I could think was it took a whole saturday to program that, and the result was not worth the effort. Years later when I got the Apple, my expectations had been tempered by the previous experience. Of interest is that my sister did not get into electronics or programming. We both played games on both computers, but took different paths in life. I'm not sure if she would say now that the computers had much impact on her life direction. She's a medical doctor now, fwiw. It's part of the reason I cringe whenever I hear someone on the internets pleading for information on how to teach their kid to program. I think being exposed to such environments is great, but it might just be that your kid is more suited to being a doctor, lawyer, teacher, fire fighter, what have you. There is a world of difference between "teaching my kid to program" vs "showing/exposing them to the awesome world of programming."
morganvachon 10y ago
I feel like you're my Doppelgänger, everything you just wrote mirrors my experience. I got mine at six years old in 1983.

DigitalJack 10y ago

Similar story here. Although I didn't get into programming until I got an Apple //e a few years later. I remember typing in a program on the 99/4A (a game called downhill ski or something like that) from BYTE magazine, or some such magazine. I remember the pain of debugging typos... The hours it took typing it in. I was expecting something like one of the cartridge games to pop out. I was quite disappointed with the fact that it was ascii, the character was a > or < sign, and the trees were asterisks. All I could think was it took a whole saturday to program that, and the result was not worth the effort. Years later when I got the Apple, my expectations had been tempered by the previous experience. Of interest is that my sister did not get into electronics or programming. We both played games on both computers, but took different paths in life. I'm not sure if she would say now that the computers had much impact on her life direction. She's a medical doctor now, fwiw. It's part of the reason I cringe whenever I hear someone on the internets pleading for information on how to teach their kid to program. I think being exposed to such environments is great, but it might just be that your kid is more suited to being a doctor, lawyer, teacher, fire fighter, what have you. There is a world of difference between "teaching my kid to program" vs "showing/exposing them to the awesome world of programming."

morganvachon 10y ago

I feel like you're my Doppelgänger, everything you just wrote mirrors my experience. I got mine at six years old in 1983.