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My parents bought me one of these when I was in basic school: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum I was happy pla

My parents bought me one of these when I was in basic school: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum I was happy playing games for a few weeks and then it broke. It took one month to fix, so meanwhile I was left with the BASIC manual it came with. I read it to withstand the cravings and when I got the computer back I was already more interested in coding than playing games.

angularly 13y ago
I started with a ZX81 around age 12, one or two models before Spectrum. It didn't have any games, but making games was a big motivation for me when getting it. Hell it didn't even have a tape station or any way to store your programs. So I would turn it on and type in some basic code from various computer magazines - usually some simple game - which would then be lost as soon as the computer was turned off again. It had 1kb of ram, which could be expanded with a bulky external cartridge of 16kb. So I taught myself Basic. Later in school I was taught Comal 80, some variation of Cobol taught in Danish schools. I learned Pascal later, also in School. When Internet came to Denmark in 1995 I taught myself PHP v1+2+3, and later Javascript, and started my own little business creating websites, based on a selfmade CMS. PHP + javascript has served me well for 18 years, but I think its time to move on to something like Go - so thats what I am planning now.
- stevekemp 13y ago
  I got hooked on programming because the ZX Spectrum 48k my parents bought the family, at age about 12, came with a broken tape deck. Instead of playing any of the bundled 12(?) games we had to wait for shops to open to get the drive swapped, and instead I read the thoroughly comprehensive manuals. Initially playing in BASIC, then later hand-assembling via the opcode table at the back of the book.

angularly 13y ago

I started with a ZX81 around age 12, one or two models before Spectrum. It didn't have any games, but making games was a big motivation for me when getting it. Hell it didn't even have a tape station or any way to store your programs. So I would turn it on and type in some basic code from various computer magazines - usually some simple game - which would then be lost as soon as the computer was turned off again. It had 1kb of ram, which could be expanded with a bulky external cartridge of 16kb. So I taught myself Basic. Later in school I was taught Comal 80, some variation of Cobol taught in Danish schools. I learned Pascal later, also in School. When Internet came to Denmark in 1995 I taught myself PHP v1+2+3, and later Javascript, and started my own little business creating websites, based on a selfmade CMS. PHP + javascript has served me well for 18 years, but I think its time to move on to something like Go - so thats what I am planning now.

stevekemp 13y ago
I got hooked on programming because the ZX Spectrum 48k my parents bought the family, at age about 12, came with a broken tape deck. Instead of playing any of the bundled 12(?) games we had to wait for shops to open to get the drive swapped, and instead I read the thoroughly comprehensive manuals. Initially playing in BASIC, then later hand-assembling via the opcode table at the back of the book.