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Maybe it's a factor of my age, but I love these kind of 'walk down memory lane' articles. After my Dad passed away, I kept only a literal handful of things of

Maybe it's a factor of my age, but I love these kind of 'walk down memory lane' articles. After my Dad passed away, I kept only a literal handful of things of his as mementos. Of these was his TI-59 (from when he was studying electronic engineering). It's the first 'computer' I ever used and wrote my very first program on (a number guessing game). Still have a few mag-cards with 'lunar lander' (turn-based, enter the thrust per iteration and see the resulting height, velocity and fuel ... if I remember correctly). Haven't fired it up in years. Might do so this afternoon :-) Addendum: the Casio credit-card sized calculator? I soooo wanted one of those!

mb_72 8y ago
I love them because it's a reminder of how I became interested in computers and programming in the first place. 1980 -> '84 I lived in a country town in South Australia (then the second-largest city, but still only around 30k people); after school I waited for my parents to finish work in the library of the government education centre, and quickly discovered copies of Byte magazine. They had all the issues from the first in the 70s' to the then 'current day', and I can remember seeing all the adverts for very cool (or so I thought) calculators and computers and hardware bits and pieces. My interest became an obsession, and I cajoled my parents into buying a TRS80 Color Computer in 1982, started typing BASIC programs into that machine, and haven't stopped programming since. These kind of articles restore, at least a little bit, the wonder and excitement I felt at having interaction with these new amazing machines, and make it a bit easier to deal with the next JS problem, or developing that new Web API for a client.
kalleboo 8y ago
> the Casio credit-card sized calculator EEVBlog did a teardown of that one if you want to see how it was put together (there's actually more going on in there than one single blob and some flat-flex!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwo7sSrSSW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwo7sSrSSW4

mb_72 8y ago

I love them because it's a reminder of how I became interested in computers and programming in the first place. 1980 -> '84 I lived in a country town in South Australia (then the second-largest city, but still only around 30k people); after school I waited for my parents to finish work in the library of the government education centre, and quickly discovered copies of Byte magazine. They had all the issues from the first in the 70s' to the then 'current day', and I can remember seeing all the adverts for very cool (or so I thought) calculators and computers and hardware bits and pieces. My interest became an obsession, and I cajoled my parents into buying a TRS80 Color Computer in 1982, started typing BASIC programs into that machine, and haven't stopped programming since. These kind of articles restore, at least a little bit, the wonder and excitement I felt at having interaction with these new amazing machines, and make it a bit easier to deal with the next JS problem, or developing that new Web API for a client.

kalleboo 8y ago

> the Casio credit-card sized calculator EEVBlog did a teardown of that one if you want to see how it was put together (there's actually more going on in there than one single blob and some flat-flex!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwo7sSrSSW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwo7sSrSSW4