3 ms·
One thing I found interesting straight off - by the cartoons and tech described (Pentium ii as a hand me down computer, internet connections at school and at ho
by ido 8y ago
One thing I found interesting straight off - by the cartoons and tech described (Pentium ii as a hand me down computer, internet connections at school and at homes) the author is at least 10 years younger than me - yet they started using the same language I did: qbasic.
Being poor rather than middle class put them about a decade behind on the tech curve.
- clarry 8y agoAt least in my part of the world, qbasic remained a popular beginner language through the 90s to the early 2000s. It was easy to get, and there was plenty of tutorials available for it. Visual Basic didn't have the same appeal unless you wanted to do desktop applications, and I guess it was harder to get your hands on. C and C++ were not considered too beginner friendly. I don't think there was much competition for QBasic on its merits, at least in the Microsoft world. To me it looks like a lot of hobbyists here started their dabblings with QB until web development (read: PHP) took over.
- ido 8y agoAs they have gotten the pentium 2 (the top of the line, most expensive CPU in 1997) as a free hand-me-down computer & considering ubuntu first released in 2004, the author probably got started at the earliest in the mid '00s - by then you'd probably get started with something like flash. But I agree QB was surprisingly long-lived, this 80s era tool probably lasted as long as Windows 98 (i.e. till XP became the "default" windows version).
- Ultimatt 8y agoLuckily Ubuntu on a Pentium II might be dog slow but most programming languages will work just fine.
- ido 8y agoOh yes you can definitely do useful programming on a Pentium II!