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Some of the most interesting computing I did was as a child with nothing but paper, a pencil, a programming book[0] and my imagination. I coded my work on reams

by bch 12y ago

Some of the most interesting computing I did was as a child with nothing but paper, a pencil, a programming book[0] and my imagination. I coded my work on reams of paper with decimal numbers representing everything (the idea of assembly code didn't really occur to me). I got a LOT of mileage from that method, and I still today refer to lessons and accomplishments learned that way. There is hope. To be fair, I did have a Commodore64 to put my work into -- but perhaps the subject of this story could get one too -- the Internet and illicit hacking/communication are probably the biggest worries for a "no computer" environment. [0] http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Language-Commodore-Other-Computers/dp/0893036641 http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Language-Commodore-Other-Compu...

ewindisch 12y ago
I did the same, but did NOT have a computer. I had picked up non-functional Commodore 64, its manuals, and some magazines. Since the computer didn't work, I spent my summer of '94 writing BASIC code that I'd never run.
- bch 12y ago
  Nice! My work was 6510 machine language, hence all the "coding in decimal" -- using mneumonics to _write_ my code (ie: "lda" for "load the accumulator") didn't occur to me, and neither had using hex. Using assembly (lda vs whatever the decimal equiv was) wouldn't have made sense anyway, since I didn't have an assembler -- I just POKEd all my code into memory. Then I'd (typically) hijack the keyboard interrupt (with the final call in MY code to the real kb handling code) and my code would run -- things like switching screen colours everytime you pressed a key. But I learned about looping, conditions, CPU program counters, registers, flags, boolean logic, memory addressing... Good times.
macintux 12y ago
I wrote my first Turing machine software out on paper, took several sheets. Then decided to write a Turing machine emulator in C to interpret it to see how well I'd done. Definitely some bugs, but overall not bad. Had I realized the PC lab next door had a Turing machine emulator, I would have saved some time but missed out on some fun. Wish I still had my emulator software around; this was many years pre-Github.

by bch 12y ago

ewindisch 12y ago

I did the same, but did NOT have a computer. I had picked up non-functional Commodore 64, its manuals, and some magazines. Since the computer didn't work, I spent my summer of '94 writing BASIC code that I'd never run.

bch 12y ago
Nice! My work was 6510 machine language, hence all the "coding in decimal" -- using mneumonics to _write_ my code (ie: "lda" for "load the accumulator") didn't occur to me, and neither had using hex. Using assembly (lda vs whatever the decimal equiv was) wouldn't have made sense anyway, since I didn't have an assembler -- I just POKEd all my code into memory. Then I'd (typically) hijack the keyboard interrupt (with the final call in MY code to the real kb handling code) and my code would run -- things like switching screen colours everytime you pressed a key. But I learned about looping, conditions, CPU program counters, registers, flags, boolean logic, memory addressing... Good times.

macintux 12y ago

I wrote my first Turing machine software out on paper, took several sheets. Then decided to write a Turing machine emulator in C to interpret it to see how well I'd done. Definitely some bugs, but overall not bad. Had I realized the PC lab next door had a Turing machine emulator, I would have saved some time but missed out on some fun. Wish I still had my emulator software around; this was many years pre-Github.