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I started with BASIC on a Vic 20 in 1979 in a computer class for kids. Then I got my own Atari 400 at home, so I learned BASIC on that. Then around 1984 I got a

I started with BASIC on a Vic 20 in 1979 in a computer class for kids. Then I got my own Atari 400 at home, so I learned BASIC on that. Then around 1984 I got a Commodore 64 and it was amazing. I quickly got past the BASIC part of the C64 manual and in the back of the manual they had a memory map, all the hardware registers for all the chips, and then all the 6502/6510 opcodes. There was even an entire schematic for the C64 in the back of the book as a fold-out poster. 14 year old me was hooked. I got into assembly when I was about 15 and never looked back to BASIC. I wrote a lot of assembly code for many years, creating "crack intros" for cracking groups and demos on the C64. I then moved on to Amiga and 68000 assembly, and I even got into SNES 65C816 (16 bit version of 6502) assembly coding using a 30th generation photocopy of the pirated SNES developer manual and a floppy disk game copier, which also had a parallel port that I managed to connect to my Amiga and use that as the development system uploading the compiled program to the SNES via parallel port. I would make "crack intros" for SNES games being traded on pirate BBS's. It was a lot of fun. Many years later, I'm still doing some 8-bit assembly code for microcontroller projects where I'm trying to use the smallest possible CPU to do interesting things. Everything I learned about Assembly on the C64 still applies to the modern microcontrollers (PIC/AVR) that I use today. In so many of these years I had not learned C. I went from assembly to scripting languages, and was a very early adopter of Javascript since the same month it first came out. Only in the last 10 years have I learned C, and it was so easy! After learning Assembly and Javascript, C was right in the middle. I've programmed in over a dozen languages through the years, but I'm really happy with Assembly, C, and Javascript as my stack depending on the project.

progmetaldev 2y ago
Thank you for this, I was born in 1979, but got introduced to the Atari 8-bit computers VERY early, and connected immediately. I have a Raspberry Pi v4, and it sounds like learning assembly on nearly anything right now will pay off. I don't have a problem learning a new language, but the C-style of languages are easiest for me. I'm sure them being imperative is a huge plus for me learning new things about any imperative language. I actually find JavaScript to be quite satisfying to write code in, mostly because I can test out functional features more easily than adopting an entirely different language to do it in. I spent my teenage years grabbing cracks and texts from BBS', and enjoyed the whole scene. It's really what sparked my interest into writing software, and I always wished I had learned some lower-level skills beyond running a debugger and poking at memory. I felt like if I knew Assembly, I could get into deeper debugging (cracking was initially my "exciting" topic to cover, but now I feel like it would just be understanding memory better when I run into a strange error).
spauldo 2y ago
Was the 400 as much of a pain to type on as it looks? I was lucky to inherit an 800 when my uncle bought his first IBM clone, and those had nice keyboards.
- leptons 2y ago
  Before I got the C64 I got an Atari 600XL because the keyboard was a real keyboard. I had really hacked a lot on the Atari 400 keyboard, so much that it was becoming pretty worn in places, so the better keyboard was really an upgrade.

progmetaldev 2y ago

Thank you for this, I was born in 1979, but got introduced to the Atari 8-bit computers VERY early, and connected immediately. I have a Raspberry Pi v4, and it sounds like learning assembly on nearly anything right now will pay off. I don't have a problem learning a new language, but the C-style of languages are easiest for me. I'm sure them being imperative is a huge plus for me learning new things about any imperative language. I actually find JavaScript to be quite satisfying to write code in, mostly because I can test out functional features more easily than adopting an entirely different language to do it in. I spent my teenage years grabbing cracks and texts from BBS', and enjoyed the whole scene. It's really what sparked my interest into writing software, and I always wished I had learned some lower-level skills beyond running a debugger and poking at memory. I felt like if I knew Assembly, I could get into deeper debugging (cracking was initially my "exciting" topic to cover, but now I feel like it would just be understanding memory better when I run into a strange error).

spauldo 2y ago

Was the 400 as much of a pain to type on as it looks? I was lucky to inherit an 800 when my uncle bought his first IBM clone, and those had nice keyboards.

leptons 2y ago
Before I got the C64 I got an Atari 600XL because the keyboard was a real keyboard. I had really hacked a lot on the Atari 400 keyboard, so much that it was becoming pretty worn in places, so the better keyboard was really an upgrade.