4 ms·

I remember discovering QBasic as a kid and being totally absorbed in it. I couldn't understand what an array was, so that halted my progress. I rediscovered it

I remember discovering QBasic as a kid and being totally absorbed in it. I couldn't understand what an array was, so that halted my progress. I rediscovered it as a teenager in highschool and wound up making a basic platform game with a mess of shitty spaghetti code goto statements and drawing lines on the screen. It was great. My dad wanted to encourage me but didn't know how, so he got me a C++ book from the library but it just made no sense and I couldn't get anywhere. Fast forward to being 23 and deciding what to major in at University. I rediscovered the idea of programming and instantly fell back in love with it. I remember blowing through the entire first semester textbook in 2 weeks and really getting it. It felt like a super power had finally been unlocked. Still does. I was so glad to reconnect with programming. I always feel I would have been an absolute whizz kid by now if I had really picked it up when I was a teenager and part of me is a little sad about that.

kimjongtrill 6y ago
Be that whiz kid now. You needed time to “kid” and now you have time to program.
- nullsense 6y ago
  I am, but at 32 I'll be that whiz kid by 40. Heck, I'll take that. I love mastering the craft and getting deeper and deeper into it each year. It's rewarding. Though being a decade ahead would be pretty astounding. That being said in just 7 short years I've gotten onto doing platform level development and having a great time doing it, so I'm pretty much right where I want to be.
shoo 6y ago
> discovering QBasic as a kid and being totally absorbed in it. I couldn't understand what an array was i started off programming with qbasic as well -- i remember when i finally figured out what arrays were and how to use them -- now if i wanted to animate many enemies/projectiles i didn't need to keep copying and pasting and defining more and more variables for each new entity! magic! at some point i got hold of a copy of darkbasic (a basic product with simple access to input, 2d graphics and sound) and made some home-brewed space invaders knock off -- all of the entity state was encoded as some horrible huge 2d array -- one index for entity id, the other index for attribute. probably all attributes were stored as integers, with different meanings depending upon the entity type, also stored as an int in one of the columns.
- nullsense 6y ago
  Haha amazing. I remember one of my first real programs in uni after figuring out enough programming to make something but not to make it well. I wrote this calculator for the various math and physics problems I had at the time and it had a nested menu system where when you clicked on a menu item it added that particular calculator/equation to a window pane. It was an absolute rats nest, but boy was it good. It's pretty incredible how you can make working software out of both well crafted code and absolute spaghetti.
  - shoo 6y ago
    > pretty incredible how you can make working software out of both well crafted code and absolute spaghetti yup. c.f. James Hague's "Write Code Like You Just Learned How to Program" https://prog21.dadgum.com/87.html https://prog21.dadgum.com/87.html
auggierose 6y ago
Yeah, QBasic was my first as well. Actually, it was my second. I started with .BAT files on MS-DOS :-) I spent about half a year until I figured out how to write and run a BAT file and about the same time for how to run a QBasic program, so after that I had a really high pain threshold for learning :-D
yourapostasy 6y ago
> My dad wanted to encourage me but didn't know how, so he got me a C++ book from the library but it just made no sense and I couldn't get anywhere. Such a nostalgia trigger. My parents were not in IT, but had parent-friends (I was friends with a kid at school, my parents and the kid's parents became friends instead of reluctant chaperones) who were in hindsight mainframe system programmers. Ironically, from hearing about the work, my parents tried to dissuade me when they figured out I was fascinated. It wouldn't pay as well as a Real Engineering Job like mechanical/chemical/electrical yet would demand the same kind of rigor to study so why not just shoot for that REJ or chemistry/biology for med school? But man, as a kid, once you're hooked molding your own world in code, the amount of sheer mind-numbing work you're willing to go through to get that dopamine hit when some piece works makes a hash of any of that advice. The only block is just the ability to ask around. Elementary school was not the time for K&R or IBM PL/I product manuals or IBM 360 manuals with no adult supervision when I was given access to the mainframe. I. Was. So. Lost. Just the editor was hard to remember rules for. Back to BASIC on the rickety school teletype (driven by a timeshared mini) I went, and my befuddled parents had no further idea how to channel the energy I put into it without spending money, as well-intentioned as they were, so they got one of the new-fangled IBM PCs at a family budget-busting cost and let me have at it. Forever grateful to them they did that. The seed grew from there. I cannot wait to see what the kids with Google these days that get that same bug bite come up with in the next few decades. It will be glorious.

kimjongtrill 6y ago

Be that whiz kid now. You needed time to “kid” and now you have time to program.

nullsense 6y ago
I am, but at 32 I'll be that whiz kid by 40. Heck, I'll take that. I love mastering the craft and getting deeper and deeper into it each year. It's rewarding. Though being a decade ahead would be pretty astounding. That being said in just 7 short years I've gotten onto doing platform level development and having a great time doing it, so I'm pretty much right where I want to be.

shoo 6y ago

> discovering QBasic as a kid and being totally absorbed in it. I couldn't understand what an array was i started off programming with qbasic as well -- i remember when i finally figured out what arrays were and how to use them -- now if i wanted to animate many enemies/projectiles i didn't need to keep copying and pasting and defining more and more variables for each new entity! magic! at some point i got hold of a copy of darkbasic (a basic product with simple access to input, 2d graphics and sound) and made some home-brewed space invaders knock off -- all of the entity state was encoded as some horrible huge 2d array -- one index for entity id, the other index for attribute. probably all attributes were stored as integers, with different meanings depending upon the entity type, also stored as an int in one of the columns.

nullsense 6y ago
Haha amazing. I remember one of my first real programs in uni after figuring out enough programming to make something but not to make it well. I wrote this calculator for the various math and physics problems I had at the time and it had a nested menu system where when you clicked on a menu item it added that particular calculator/equation to a window pane. It was an absolute rats nest, but boy was it good. It's pretty incredible how you can make working software out of both well crafted code and absolute spaghetti.
- shoo 6y ago
  > pretty incredible how you can make working software out of both well crafted code and absolute spaghetti yup. c.f. James Hague's "Write Code Like You Just Learned How to Program" https://prog21.dadgum.com/87.html https://prog21.dadgum.com/87.html

auggierose 6y ago

Yeah, QBasic was my first as well. Actually, it was my second. I started with .BAT files on MS-DOS :-) I spent about half a year until I figured out how to write and run a BAT file and about the same time for how to run a QBasic program, so after that I had a really high pain threshold for learning :-D

yourapostasy 6y ago

> My dad wanted to encourage me but didn't know how, so he got me a C++ book from the library but it just made no sense and I couldn't get anywhere. Such a nostalgia trigger. My parents were not in IT, but had parent-friends (I was friends with a kid at school, my parents and the kid's parents became friends instead of reluctant chaperones) who were in hindsight mainframe system programmers. Ironically, from hearing about the work, my parents tried to dissuade me when they figured out I was fascinated. It wouldn't pay as well as a Real Engineering Job like mechanical/chemical/electrical yet would demand the same kind of rigor to study so why not just shoot for that REJ or chemistry/biology for med school? But man, as a kid, once you're hooked molding your own world in code, the amount of sheer mind-numbing work you're willing to go through to get that dopamine hit when some piece works makes a hash of any of that advice. The only block is just the ability to ask around. Elementary school was not the time for K&R or IBM PL/I product manuals or IBM 360 manuals with no adult supervision when I was given access to the mainframe. I. Was. So. Lost. Just the editor was hard to remember rules for. Back to BASIC on the rickety school teletype (driven by a timeshared mini) I went, and my befuddled parents had no further idea how to channel the energy I put into it without spending money, as well-intentioned as they were, so they got one of the new-fangled IBM PCs at a family budget-busting cost and let me have at it. Forever grateful to them they did that. The seed grew from there. I cannot wait to see what the kids with Google these days that get that same bug bite come up with in the next few decades. It will be glorious.