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I think the first time I tried programming was when I was simply looking at QBasic code, astonished how Nibbles and Gorillas work and thought, "these characters
by sev 15y ago
I think the first time I tried programming was when I was simply looking at QBasic code, astonished how Nibbles and Gorillas work and thought, "these characters I see on the screen before running the game are what make the game function? If so, how?" This was on my father's 486/33 I believe, although I barely remember his 386 which could have been what it was on. Regardless, I was probably 5 or 6 and I tried messing with those characters on the screen to modify the game. Later my parents bought me one of those kid laptops with a little 6 inch x 3 inch screen that you could get from Toys 'R Us and I found out it had a programming option where you can type in QBasic code...I found some code in a math book we had at home, and typed away. After I got the one from the book working, I modified them to see what my changes would do.
- vivekjishtu 15y agoNibbles and Gorillas was the first piece of code that I saw and was amazed how it worked. It taught me why we need to use functions and subs. And as a 13 year old it was fascinating to understand those concepts. And most of the programming I learnt was from the snippets of code in the QBasic help files.
- stoolpigeon 15y agoAt my highschool - the progression was Basic on Apple IIe machines and then Pascal. I remember talking to an older friend who was already doing Pascal and he said, "There are no line numbers." I was stunned. "What?! How can you write a program without line numbers?"
- insom 15y agoYup, the first lump of non-line-numbered BASIC I'd ever seen. I learned on the Spectrum 48K and when I switched to PCs I kept all of the limitations with me until I read those two.
- pelemele 15y agoOh those nights! Waiting 15 minutes for a program to load from a tape recorder just to find out that tape is damaged at the end ;-)
- alanbyrne 15y agoHa! Wow, this is pretty much exactly how I started. Playing with the numbers in Gorillas to make the Banana blast radius much larger. The holy grail was to create a "homing banana", but my 10 year old brain couldn't work out the math.
- evincarofautumn 15y agoQB was one of the earlier languages I played around with, too, actually, and only ten years ago. I think it was an excellent environment for learning to program. It was simple, with many built-in functions for graphics and audio—everything a growing game programmer needs. It also had a pretty good editor, with documentation and examples only a right-click away. The now-defunct QB4All community was also very friendly and helpful. Furthermore, I’d say that having an underpowered but batteries-included language helps focus you on the goal of making a thing, rather than the process. It also encourages hacking, to circumvent the language’s restrictions. Could you ask for better?
- pacmon 15y agoI also started with QBasic, Nibbles and Gorillas. I then moved on to writing my own implementation of Hangman. Oh the memories!
- astro1138 15y agoNot just here to say I've had a similar experience: how are the kids of today going to be amazed when top-notch graphics are in all devices?