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In 1987 there was a pop-science book called “Chaos” by James Gleick that was, naturally, about chaos theory. At one point it described things like Mandelbrot/Ju

In 1987 there was a pop-science book called “Chaos” by James Gleick that was, naturally, about chaos theory. At one point it described things like Mandelbrot/Julia sets and their ilk. There was one page that had a footnote at the bottom that described the algorithm used to generate a Mandelbrot set. I had a PCjr, which was an 8088. Very slow, EGA graphics. 256k RAM. I did have a 20Mb hard drive, though. I wanted to verify that algorithm, though. So I bought some books on how to program in C from Waldenbooks. After not too long I managed write a program to draw a Mandelbrot set on my PCjr. It was incredibly slow: I watched it paint each pixel, and let it run for many hours before I would get a complete set. But after much trial and error, it worked. I was 16 years old. It was the first thing I had ever done that I was really proud of.

tlocke 4y ago
I read that same book, maybe a year or two later than you, and also wrote a program to draw a Mandelbrot set on a BBC Model B in my first year at Uni.
- revscat 4y ago
  What did you write it in? Was yours similarly slow?
beej71 4y ago
You and I did exactly the same thing. :)
chipmonkey75 4y ago
Almost the same experience here; I have great nostalgia for that feeling, and the waiting for hours to finish. Nice to hear similar stories from someone else! I still have my copy of "Chaos", and it was (and still is) awesome, but another book I got around the same time was "Chaos, Fractals, and Dynamics", which included pseudocode, that I had to rewrite into Commodore-64 compatible BASIC. I'd coded prior to this; I got my Commodore when I was like 11 (the family machine, but I used it by far the most). Mostly typing in games from magazines, but fractals were the first thing that felt like it was "computer science" - something that really explores a new space that just wouldn't be possible without a computer.

tlocke 4y ago

I read that same book, maybe a year or two later than you, and also wrote a program to draw a Mandelbrot set on a BBC Model B in my first year at Uni.

revscat 4y ago
What did you write it in? Was yours similarly slow?

beej71 4y ago

You and I did exactly the same thing. :)

chipmonkey75 4y ago

Almost the same experience here; I have great nostalgia for that feeling, and the waiting for hours to finish. Nice to hear similar stories from someone else! I still have my copy of "Chaos", and it was (and still is) awesome, but another book I got around the same time was "Chaos, Fractals, and Dynamics", which included pseudocode, that I had to rewrite into Commodore-64 compatible BASIC. I'd coded prior to this; I got my Commodore when I was like 11 (the family machine, but I used it by far the most). Mostly typing in games from magazines, but fractals were the first thing that felt like it was "computer science" - something that really explores a new space that just wouldn't be possible without a computer.