5 ms·
What's interesting is that kids who started programming in the 70s / 80s did use desktop computers. I was one of them, I started programming in 1983 with a TI99
by diego 12y ago
What's interesting is that kids who started programming in the 70s / 80s did use desktop computers. I was one of them, I started programming in 1983 with a TI99/4A. The computers I used at school had floppy disk drives, so I could even save my work. For the first few months I owned just one 128kb 5 1/4 floppy where I kept my (interpreted) programs.
I used to type in BASIC programs from magazines such as Byte. A typical bug that bit me several times was typing an l instead of a 1.
- Zelphyr 12y agoGeez, I used to get hit with that "l" instead of a "1" all the time. It was so much nicer when some of the mags went to a fixed-width font on non-gloss paper for code.
- foobarian 12y agoI was lucky that one of the first issues of Compute! I got my hands on had a listing for a proofreader[1], a utility that checksummed each typed line of BASIC and displayed the checksum in the left margin. All listings in the magazine had these checksums printed to the left of the line numbers, so it was easy to catch typing errors. This was especially useful without any kind of permanent storage. I had to type in my games every time. :-) [1] Compute! November 1986 issue, page 94. https://ia600700.us.archive.org/6/items/1986-11-compute-magazine/Compute_Issue_078_1986_Nov.pdf https://ia600700.us.archive.org/6/items/1986-11-compute-maga...
- brudgers 12y agoI owned just one 128kb 5 1/4 floppy 'Why would anyone ever need two?' I remember thinking.