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> I started using Linux five years ago, mainly because I couldn’t figure out how to get Python working on Windows Windows being by far the most dominant operat

• ashleyn 2y ago
  windows 95 did come with Qbasic for MS-DOS. it wasn't the latest and greatest, but it did contribute to a moderately large online scene of kids making Qbasic games or Windows-like Qbasic GUIs for DOS.
  • bigfishrunning 2y ago
    That's where I got started, copying basic code from the back of Boy's Life magazine, before I had a modem. I'm sure I'm not the only one here!
    • binary132 2y ago
      I learned BASIC from those Usborne books on it, muddling my way through with qbasic. The PDFs of them are actually available on their site now!
      • vrighter 2y ago
        holy shit, thanks for the tip! I also learned programming from those usborne books, using qbasic (The dragon32 ran a version of microsoft basic, so the code for it was generally quite compatible with qbasic). I'll go download them all for archiving.
        • binary132 2y ago
          Here's the link for the record https://usborne.com/us/books/computer-and-coding-books https://usborne.com/us/books/computer-and-coding-books I tried to use the wayback machine version, but it didn't cache the PDFs right since I guess they're hosted on a public Google Drive
          • vrighter 2y ago
            thanks, got a local copy of all of them
  • kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
    Debug.exe still shipped in Win7 x86.
  • paride5745 2y ago
    I remember in Win98 it being hidden in the Windows folder, if you didn’t know where and what to look for, it was pretty much impossible to find.
  • spacechild1 2y ago
    That's how I started programming as a kid! There even were a few sample games.
• ralusek 2y ago
  When I was first getting started with programming in about 2008, I found it to be so unbelievably frustrating. Any tutorial I was following would invariably run into something that didn't work how it was supposed to. I would try to find some work around, and sort of would, but it would lead to other unforeseen issues down the line. I finally came across cygwin, and that sort of made things start to work. Eventually, though, I just installed a linux partition and literally never looked back. The entire ecosystem of everything I was learning at the time (Python, JS, PHP) was set up for unix. Things have improved over time, and obviously WSL is nice, but it's still a pain.
• eru 2y ago
  Python is actually relatively easy to set up on Windows. (Or at least it was easy to set up on Windows 98 in the early 2000s. I don't know how it's now, or five years ago.) You just download the official Python installer, and off you go. It even comes with Idle as a reasonably good IDE.
  • nicce 2y ago
    If you run python in command-line, it starts Windows Store…
    • a1o 2y ago
      The python from Windows Store is not good, it redirects some path writes and will make the debugging experience of tools using python dreadful. Always install from the win32 installer from the website.
      • omolobo 2y ago
        That's not the point. The point is that even after you install Python on Windows using the official installer, and unless you put that early in the %PATH%, running 'python' on a powershell / Windows terminal will pop up the Windows Store. That's just how fucking stupid Windows is these days.
        • int_19h 2y ago
          If you install Python using the official installer from python.org and check the "Add interpreter to PATH" box when installing, running `python` in shell will launch it.
    • heavensteeth 2y ago
      Experiencing this for the first time was really jaw dropping. And I believe by default "python3" has distinct behaviour of _telling you_ to visit the Microsoft Store, but not opening it. Bizarre.
  • actuallyalys 2y ago
• alexjplant 2y ago
  I will also say that starting to use Linux in earnest around the age of 20 was a very humbling experience having been raised on Windows. Back in the 00s being able to deal with Microsoft esoterica by way of registry hacks and MMC snap-in wizardry meant that you were a "smart computer kid" that non-technical folks found impressive. It wasn't until I started using an OS that acted more consistently and predictably that I realized I'd been building a career (and decently-sized ego) out of Microsoft-specific make-work. Being freed up to learn more timeless and universal concepts lined up perfectly with my college coursework centered around writing shells, compilers, etc. and completely changed how I interacted with computers for the better. Apropos - if I ever win the lottery and don't need a job I'm going to spend some time learning Plan 9. Superficially it seems to be Unix without many of the warts combined with some concepts from NT/VMS that make good sense.
  • robertlagrant 2y ago
    > building a career (and decently-sized ego) out of Microsoft-specific make-work This can be quite a successful career, probably even if you start today.
    • skyyler 2y ago
      That's what I'm doing right now because it's easy. I need to look for more challenging work soon.
    • kjs3 2y ago
      My brother built his company (IT services in the manufacturing sector) on the back of Microsoft starting in the mid 90s. He's done extremely well and continues to work on interesting stuff (these days cloud, complex databases, CRM, etc). Employees are by-and-large long term and well compensated. Not FAANG numbers to be sure, but we're in a city with a reasonable CoL. But he focused on building a long-term sustainable business, not chasing some buzzword-du-jour, VC funded pipedream with a quick exit, and thus no matter his personal success will never have any HN cred.
      • 2y ago
• purple-leafy 2y ago
  Lol when I first had to use Linux at uni, I tried to set up a hard-drive partition and wiped my windows partition. That was a fun day, I knew nothing!
• BrouteMinou 2y ago
  I started on an Amiga without a compiler, and I've learned my first programming language there. Then I got my first PC with Windows, and I learned a shit ton on it. I am sure you had little effort to get your games, didn't you? If you wanted to code, you would have done the same effort to get what you needed. Magazines were a thing too... Cheap excuses, the OS is irrelevant here.
  • worthless-trash 2y ago
    Not everyone had finances for magazines, not everyone lives in a densely populated area where you can get access to information, including libraries. Many HN readers frequently forget they lived in the perfect storm to allow their skills to grow.
    • ane 2y ago
      Indeed, as a kid of 10, I remember learning C/C++ thanks to DJGPP, a DOS port of GCC, being free software. I didn't have any money to buy a commercial compiler, though I never asked my parents. I wasn't sure how to frame the question, I guess. Well, regardless, getting your hands on a commercial compiler wasn't that difficult in the late 90s/early 00s. Soon after though small non-commercial indie games kinda died out and everyone was using DirectX using MSVC on Windows, until SDL came out.
      • int_19h 2y ago
        SDL appeared in late 90s / early 00s, that's pretty much when it became popular (e.g. most early Loki Linux game ports from used SDL). As far as compilers, Borland shipped a free version of their C++ Builder 5.5 compiler right around that time, too, so on Windows we had that in addition to MinGW.
  • homebrewer 2y ago
    I lived in bumfuck nowhere where there were basically no developers (if you knew how to reinstall Windows you were called "a genius kid"), no computer magazines, and access to the internet was available through dial-up for an hour or two in the middle of the night a couple of times per month because it was: 1) very slow — my modem was never able to achieve more than 2.5-3 KB/s, and 2) pretty expensive given our measly salaries. I also didn't speak English at all. I first got access to a programming environment at 16, at an age where my Western peers were starting to write operating systems: it was a copy of "pirated" Delphi that came by pure chance. The first couple of years I was making shit that wouldn't impress anybody because there was nothing to learn from besides the standard library, which would probably be achievable by a computer science version of Ramanujan, but not by some random dude like myself. Please remember about the rest of the world before accusing others of making "cheap excuses". Not every person on this planet lived or lives in the middle of Manhattan; this may very well include GP.
• afavour 2y ago
  In all those years (and in years since) the most-used programming environment was the web browser. But it always gets written off. I grew up in the MS-DOS era and my exposure to programming was basically batch files too. That and editing CONFIG.SYS.
• SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
  Opposite hot take: one of the main reasons I got into programming was because Microsoft Access made it accessible enough that I was confident enough to produce value even knowing nothing about how to think like a software engineer
• TimTheTinker 2y ago
  > only interpreter Hey now, Windows Script Host (WSH) supported VBA and JScript scripts. WSH was installed by default on systems up through Windows 7, I believe. Scripts run though WSH had access to a wide array of APIs -- a lot was possible. The WSH executable (wscript.exe) was also configured to be the default handler for .js files in Windows Explorer. Also, HTA apps were an option. Write an HTML file, include a <script> tag with either JS or VBA, and you have access to APIs equivalent to a local HTML file opened on IE5, plus some. This was a popular option at one point for powering CD-ROM autorun menus, among other things. (The company I worked for used embedded HTA in a massive C++ COM app to render some forms where the fields and values had to be dynamic based on data only known at run time. Debugging was horrible until I learned you could inject Firebug Lite into the HTA apps and at least be able to console.log(). It was truly a dark, dusty corner of Windows programming -- of which there were many.)
  • badsectoracula 2y ago
    Yeah, WSH and VBA was available since Win98, though the documentation was scarce and not part of Windows itself (compare with QBASIC someone else mentioned where not only it came with documentation but the first thing it tells you when you run it is how to open the documentation). I did use it for an "Introduction to programming" magazine article back in mid-2000s though, main reason because it was already there and all you had to do was open Notepad and start typing (...and make sure you save with a .vbs and not a .vbs.txt extension...). I even got an email a few years later by someone telling me they got into programming because of it :-P.
• pjmlp 2y ago
  Yet those of us that started to program in the 1980's and older decades, were able to acquire all the required programming tools for Windows. And we didn't had the Internet to learn from. Personally I don't get this kind of excuses.
  • dijit 2y ago
    computers in the 80s only had a programming environment. You would drop basically directly into an interpreter. So Windows was an evolution for you. I know this because my mother knew more how to program than I did, and I was the one with the passion for it and she was not. I also discussed this recently with a 47-year-old programmer. and we came to the same conclusion.
    • pjmlp 2y ago
      Which computers thought? That wasn't true of CP/M, UNIX, VMS, Atari ST, Amiga, and many others. The reality was not the same as 8 bit home computers, and even on those you were limited by BASIC. Anything else like machine code, required the same learning effort. If you wanted to program, you either bought the programming tools, or pirated them, most of the time. Then you would need to buy books, computer magazines, or have the luck of local library with computing section, to actually learn how to use them.
      • dijit 2y ago
        my mum had a Commodore 64, and before that a zx-spectrum The only programming book in my local library was COBOL. There was no included disk (it was missing) but in hindsight, it would likely not have worked on windows anyway. Your premise is that I knew what I was looking for, I kinda didn’t. My first proper exposure to programming anything was when college told me there was a thing called visual studio and .NET; its only later when installing linux that I found that many of the systems were written in interpreted languages and could be modified (yum, apt etc). That was extremely evolutionary for me.
        • 2y ago
• eek2121 2y ago
  I got my start on a computer that booted to a BASIC prompt! :)
• 0xDEFACED 2y ago
  wow, i also started using linux about 5 years ago due to frustrations with getting python to work on windows sure, the windows installer is easy enough to get set up, but pretty quickly i started noticing a pattern in most documentation/tutorials. Linux: one-line setup command Windows: nothing, or a complicated, multi-step process (that rarely works without hiccups) wasting my time going down rabbit holes debugging my environment was not as fun as actually writing code
• soerxpso 2y ago
  I do have fond memories of batch files, though. I showed my classmates that it only took two lines of batch to make the school library's computers open their disk drives every hour.
• int_19h 2y ago
  > the only interpreter being fucking batchfiles with no docs… come on… QBASIC was always there, though? From Win98 onwards, Active Scripting was there out of the box with VBScript and JScript. From Vista onwards, .NET runtime shipped as an OS component, and it includes C#, VB.NET, and (back then) JScript.NET compilers in the box. Although, granted, no offline docs in either case.
• xp84 2y ago
  QBASIC.EXE: Am I a joke to you?