I started on an MSX-1 and then MSX-2 in the early 80s; programming I learned before that in GW-Basic on a luggable [0] and because my parents wanted me to conti

I started on an MSX-1 and then MSX-2 in the early 80s; programming I learned before that in GW-Basic on a luggable [0] and because my parents wanted me to continue (I was just 8), they got an MSX-1 and a year after that an MSX-2. By then I was writing games and wordprocessors (I had some obsession with them at the time) in rancid combinations of MSX-Basic and Z80 asm. It was so fast to iterate that way (provided you were careful with the asm). I wrote enormous monsters of programs in that combi for the MSX-2 and it was always a miracle how they actually worked in the end. Shame I do not have backups. I found a demo of mine on an old MSX-2 BBS backup on a second hand machine I bought, but that was the 'protected' one (Basic source obfuscated and 'hidden' and assembly as bload blob); I have not had the time to figure out what I did there. After that I moved to programming BBS software in Pascal and C and more games and it slowed down the progress a lot; so slow that compiling process. It improved a while later with Delphi but after that (C++, Java, C# etc, Haskell, etc) it all went down again; everything is still not really as accessible and fast to iterate as that Basic and Delphi experience. I think it was mainly because they both were a) very fast (interpreted and with Delphi, a very fast, almost instant compiler) and b) for me, closed loop; I had almost no access to other devs (only via BBS's) and that meant I had "The Book" for my environment and that was all there was to learn. So no code completion or spelonking 1000s of libs was needed, just use what you have and you could make anything. Ofcourse you theoretically could make anything; practically you were slow because you had to basically write a lot yourself that you can just pull from the internet now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_Data_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_Data_Systems