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I was an 80s kid (born in 1980, in fact). I started programming in BASIC on the family Apple ][e sometime between kindergarten and 2nd grade, I can't remember

by jcadam 9y ago

I was an 80s kid (born in 1980, in fact). I started programming in BASIC on the family Apple ][e sometime between kindergarten and 2nd grade, I can't remember anymore now. My mother is a software engineer (who started programming in college, on punch cards) and had to suffer through me constantly badgering her for help early on :) The Apple ][e became an Amiga and I moved on to AMOS, then a 486 when I finally switched over to hacking around in "real" languages like C and Pascal on DOS, windows, and eventually Linux. Then came college (I knew I was going to major in Computer Science since... always). My resume shows a little more than 10 years of 'professional' programming experience, which is all anyone cares about, but when you hire an 80s kid like me, you're getting a lot more experience than you imagine. Yea, yea, a lot of the early stuff was undisciplined hacking and flailing without the proper theoretical grounding of a CS education. But I say it still counts for something :)

topbanana 9y ago
AMOS! I created an image editing program in AMOS and several games. I must have been around 11 or 12. I never published any of them sadly, and they've long since disappeared. Happy memories
ams6110 9y ago
I started in the late 1970s at age 11-ish, on a TRS-80 Model I. One of the local high schools bought a classroom of them and offered "Computer Math" as an evening extra-curricular for younger kids. The difference then was that access to computers was something new and exciting. Today's kids grow up with computers from almost birth. They are commonplace items and don't strike up as much interest or curiosity.
- jcadam 9y ago
  I remember the facility my mother worked at had a family-day and I went on a tour, and got to see an actually operating Cray-2 (with the coolant waterfall). It was mesmerizing. So much cooler than rows of cabinets full of rack-mount equipment in a modern data center :)
hungerstrike 9y ago
I was born in 74 and around 1982 someone gave my family a Commodore VIC-20, a computer that you hooked up to the TV. It had no storage, so every time I wanted to play a game called Moon Patrol, we had to type in 3 pages of BASIC. Most of the time I asked my mom to type it in, but since I actually did it a few times by myself I tell people that I started programming when I was 8. However, I didn't really get started until a few years later. I'm so glad for that computer though because it got me into video games which is what got me interested in building computers and then programming.
chaoticmass 9y ago
I was born in 1985, but our family could only afford a very old hand-me-down IBM PCjr back in 1991. I started programming BASIC by hand entering code from the examples given in the manual. When I would get stuck or have a question I would ask my Dad and he would tell me I was "jumping the gun" because I would be deep into the latter half the the manual asking him what a word meant. I wasn't discouraged though and I think the time I spent learning to work through the issues myself was very valuable to my skill as a programmer later in life.

by jcadam 9y ago

topbanana 9y ago

AMOS! I created an image editing program in AMOS and several games. I must have been around 11 or 12. I never published any of them sadly, and they've long since disappeared. Happy memories

ams6110 9y ago

I started in the late 1970s at age 11-ish, on a TRS-80 Model I. One of the local high schools bought a classroom of them and offered "Computer Math" as an evening extra-curricular for younger kids. The difference then was that access to computers was something new and exciting. Today's kids grow up with computers from almost birth. They are commonplace items and don't strike up as much interest or curiosity.

jcadam 9y ago
I remember the facility my mother worked at had a family-day and I went on a tour, and got to see an actually operating Cray-2 (with the coolant waterfall). It was mesmerizing. So much cooler than rows of cabinets full of rack-mount equipment in a modern data center :)

hungerstrike 9y ago

I was born in 74 and around 1982 someone gave my family a Commodore VIC-20, a computer that you hooked up to the TV. It had no storage, so every time I wanted to play a game called Moon Patrol, we had to type in 3 pages of BASIC. Most of the time I asked my mom to type it in, but since I actually did it a few times by myself I tell people that I started programming when I was 8. However, I didn't really get started until a few years later. I'm so glad for that computer though because it got me into video games which is what got me interested in building computers and then programming.

chaoticmass 9y ago

I was born in 1985, but our family could only afford a very old hand-me-down IBM PCjr back in 1991. I started programming BASIC by hand entering code from the examples given in the manual. When I would get stuck or have a question I would ask my Dad and he would tell me I was "jumping the gun" because I would be deep into the latter half the the manual asking him what a word meant. I wasn't discouraged though and I think the time I spent learning to work through the issues myself was very valuable to my skill as a programmer later in life.