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  3. How old were you when you first wrote a line of code ?

How old were you when you first wrote a line of code ?

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  • A avd823

    I was 12. The language was BASIC and the system was a good old Honeywell H1642 time sharing system. We had limited storage so we saved our code using paper tape from an ASR-33 teletype. We were also able to use a Honeywell 316 mini-computer by installing the BASIC interpreter. How did we load it? By going to the H316's front panel and entering the "key in loader" instructions in binary using the rocker switches. The interpreter was a large spool of paper tape. Man we thought we were so cool. :-) I graduated to Fortran and assembly after that (anyone remember DAP?)

    Allan Dianic Sr. Systems Engineer

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    bmcD99
    wrote on last edited by
    #114

    We were cool... then. now we're just old.

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    • C Captain Price

      :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

      "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

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      Alexander DiMauro
      wrote on last edited by
      #115

      10. TI-Basic on a TI-99/4A back in 1981. Still miss it. And, as much as I would like to say 'I have been coding since I was 10', I actually took a break from 1984-98 to pursue sound engineering. Worked creating music on a Mac during the 90's and then came back to programming in 1998. Miss the music, too. Memories...

      I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone - Bjarne Stroustrup The world is going to laugh at you anyway, might as well crack the 1st joke! My code has no bugs, it runs exactly as it was written.

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      • C Captain Price

        :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

        "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

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        Norm Powroz
        wrote on last edited by
        #116

        15, in 1969. I was a Grade 11 high school student. Language was FORTRAN IV using the WATFOR compiler, machine was an IBM 360/50 mainframe at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

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        • C Captain Price

          :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

          "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

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          IQtheMC
          wrote on last edited by
          #117

          I was 33. Now I'm 34.

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          • C Captain Price

            :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

            "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

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            double bubba
            wrote on last edited by
            #118

            Do you mean wrote the program down on paper and then created the punch cards? I was about 13 and it was about 1973. It was a Monroe Calculator that was programmable like computers. They had special worksheets that you wrote your program down on. And then hand punched cards to match the worksheet.

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            • C Captain Price

              :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

              "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

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              RefugeeFromSlashDot
              wrote on last edited by
              #119

              15. My High School had a Teletype terminal with paper tape punch/reader connected via 300 baud modem to a GE Timesharing mainframe and we programed in a dialect of BASIC that required line numbers.

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              • C Captain Price

                :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

                "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

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                User 10151468
                wrote on last edited by
                #120

                10 years old - Coleco Adam writing code in SmartBasic! :)

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                • C Captain Price

                  :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

                  "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

                  Y Offline
                  Y Offline
                  Yvan Rodrigues
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #121

                  8, BASIC on a VIC-20 in 1982.

                  Yvan Rodrigues, C.Tech. Red Cell Innovation Inc.

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                  • C Captain Price

                    :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

                    "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

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                    Steve Westerhout
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #122

                    I was about 8, after getting a TRS"Trash"-80 for Christmas. Writing in good old Basic. Goto's and all.

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                    • E ExcellentOrg

                      14. Year 1984. Wrote few games like Tic Tac Toe and a Payroll application in ROM Basic. It was on earliest PC that had no hard drive and everything was on a removable 8" floppy.

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                      User 9036927
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #123

                      Similar. I was 7 in 1986. I learned on GW-Basic on a Tandy 1000 (no hard drive, but 5.25-inch diskettes).

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                      • C Captain Price

                        :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

                        "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

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                        Gonzalo Brusella
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #124

                        5/6 years old, on Basic on a Sinclair's Z80 Clone

                        I'm on a Fuzzy State: Between 0 an 1

                        1 Reply Last reply
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                        • C Captain Price

                          :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

                          "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

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                          mykeapredko
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #125

                          9 years old in 1971 - my Dad was taking a course and showed me how to fill out "bubble cards" (computer cards that you filled in circles in pencil rather than punched them out) in Fortran: program add print *, "7 + 5", 7 + 5 end

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                          • C Captain Price

                            :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

                            "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

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                            LimeyRedneck
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #126

                            1971, eleven - timesharing basic on a PDP-8, and some weird s**t assembler for an old phillips bunny hopper machine that had been donated to my school in pieces - we rebuilt the sucker, learned to bootstrap it by trial and error, and wrote lots of adventure/star trek type games. Ah! real programming with grease under the fingernails! and yes, at first, smoke tests really were. you young turks really have it easy these days :laugh: .

                            Nothing is impossible, we just don't know the way of it yet.

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                            • C Captain Price

                              :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

                              "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

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                              Jack Peacock
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #127

                              15 years old, in high school, using an ASR33 Teletype connected at an amazing 110 baud to a Univac 1106 (with FASTRAND drum instead of disk, that oughta date it). Language was something new called Dartmouth BASIC. Second semester we moved to FORTRAN and punched cards, third semester was ALGOL. The Univac was given to the school district as surplus from the early Apollo work by a local NASA contractor. Then I would go home at night and do my Calculus homework on stone tablet using a flint chisel...... Jack Peacock

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                              • C Captain Price

                                :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

                                "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

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                                P Offline
                                Paul G Scannell
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #128

                                I became a software engineer a little later than most of you, probably. I started out as a hardware technician back in the '70s after a 6 year stint in the Army but had a serious interest in the software side of things. Especially since I could see that I wouldn't be "fixing" computers too much longer as everything started to become more modularized. All I was was a highly trained "board swapper" at the end. So, in 1980 I made the big jump to becoming a programmer. My first job was as a hardware diagnostics developer. A natural beginning for someone who was hardware-centric for over a decade. I gradually moved to being a firmware developer (another natural progression) until the late '90s when I made the jump to more business-related programming, which I am still doing today. Along the way I migrated from assembler to Clipper for dBase to C to HTML to Classic ASP to VB6 to .NET VB and C#. So I'm basically a jack of all trades (and master of most!!) And with the data side of things, from dBase II to Microsoft Access to SQL Server and Oracle.

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                                • C Captain Price

                                  :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

                                  "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

                                  M Offline
                                  M Offline
                                  Member 10027965
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #129

                                  on Atari Basic, with 5.25" floppy disk, Atari 2600 console. using the "Atari User Manual", howww...along time ago!, I was like 11.great days!!!!! :-D :) :laugh: :cool::cool:

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                                  • C Captain Price

                                    :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

                                    "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

                                    S Offline
                                    S Offline
                                    Shelby Robertson
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #130

                                    12 in QuickBASIC 14 Turbo c++

                                    CPallini wrote:

                                    You cannot argue with agile people so just take the extreme approach and shoot him. :Smile:

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                                    • C Captain Price

                                      :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

                                      "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

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                                      User 10255678
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #131

                                      I was 15 when I wrote my first programs on a ZX-Spectrum 48K. Using that one-key command language it featured.

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                                      • M Maximilien

                                        10-ish. a Basic and/or Logo line of code.

                                        I'd rather be phishing!

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                                        RafagaX
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #132

                                        :thumbsup: for Logo, it was my first programming language when I was somewhere around 7-8 years old, I still have a book on it, (although I don't have a 5 1/2 disk reader to load the interpreter anymore... :( )

                                        CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...

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                                        • C Captain Price

                                          :-D :sigh: :zzz: :wtf:

                                          "If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"

                                          S Offline
                                          S Offline
                                          Sound Dude
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #133

                                          17. Fortran on punch cards submitted to an IBM 360/50 in 1974. That's all it took and I was hooked for life.

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