How much computer illiterate were you when...
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...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P
AmigaBASIC, modifying a demo. I only knew that Big Fat Agnus, Paula and Denise were respsonsible for the output, and the result of the tinkering was predictable[^]. I should really get a 512 kb RAM upgrade.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Not very. Wrote my first program in Pascal on a Multics time-sharing system using punch cards (1980) before graduating to a VAX in 1981. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
Ravi, I'll have you know that I worked on that CPU long before you accessed it via time-sharing. I worked for GE and brought these 645 CPUs up just after they had been manufactured. The CPUs didn't even run (typically) without swapping out several (discrete component) boards and correcting several wiring errors (no LSI in this era). My first real programming experience was to write a small (4 punch cards) program (manually punched using a keypunch in multi-punch mode) that could be booted and the program could be hardware single stepped through its execution and would check out the memory segmentation LRU logic to determine which segment descriptor to discard in order to load a new descriptor. This program was later used to debug a replacement LSI implementation of the discrete component logic circuts (trust me, the engineers first try was totally hosed). I'll give you a "not very", and raise you a "really not very". Dave.
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AmigaBASIC, modifying a demo. I only knew that Big Fat Agnus, Paula and Denise were respsonsible for the output, and the result of the tinkering was predictable[^]. I should really get a 512 kb RAM upgrade.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
Quote:
I should really get a 512 kb RAM upgrade.
My first PC was a Step386 with (wait for it) 4 Megabytes of memory, the "Bleading Edge". Paid $1,000.00 for each chip. Dave.
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Ravi, I'll have you know that I worked on that CPU long before you accessed it via time-sharing. I worked for GE and brought these 645 CPUs up just after they had been manufactured. The CPUs didn't even run (typically) without swapping out several (discrete component) boards and correcting several wiring errors (no LSI in this era). My first real programming experience was to write a small (4 punch cards) program (manually punched using a keypunch in multi-punch mode) that could be booted and the program could be hardware single stepped through its execution and would check out the memory segmentation LRU logic to determine which segment descriptor to discard in order to load a new descriptor. This program was later used to debug a replacement LSI implementation of the discrete component logic circuts (trust me, the engineers first try was totally hosed). I'll give you a "not very", and raise you a "really not very". Dave.
Nice! :-D /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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I am sorry, it is not useless. It is fairly easy to get windows message numbers and their meaning if you want to trap them. Oh and applying a processor patch is easier than that if you can get the correct SDK (I almosttypes APK here :doh:). sarcasm
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d@nish wrote:
it is not useless
You might want to revise that opinion after reading the WDK...
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...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P
First attempts around 7 or 8 years old. Coco basic on a TRS80 color. I had multiple manuals for it, but while I figured out what a for loop could be helpful in drawing figures with ASCII block characters, I was totally baffled by lots of other stuff in it like Boolean Algebra. Second attempt around 15/16 yo, turbo pascal for dos. I got pointers and boolean logic this time. Mostly to outsmart my teachers ability to grade my work I taught myself OOP (which she admitted to not knowing); but Borlands docs and late 90s internet totally failed to enlighten me about base classes and inheritance leaving me to try rolling my own by using function pointers as a way to effectively overload methods. So close, yet so far..... :doh:
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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d@nish wrote:
it is not useless
You might want to revise that opinion after reading the WDK...
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...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P
In the beginning I have to reset the Spectrum if I made an error typing in the programs from the books or magazines.
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...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P
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...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P
Since I started my computer programming by flipping switches on the front of a bare-bones PDP-8 I was probably as computer literate as a 19 year old student could be in 1972. I quickly moved to assembly language on an Intel 8008 (with a brief spell on the 4004 while waiting for the prototype 8008 to arrive direct from Intel) on a dedicated card that I designed and built myself as a project for my sandwich course with BT (then the GPO).
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...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P
I'm so old I can remember when 'Duktape' was called 'Duct Tape'. And why. Duktape? Dooktarrpay?
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...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P
d@nish wrote:
...you wrote your first program?
Very. First off, it wasn't a program written by me but a long listing from a book into building speakers enclosures (Radio Shack) - me and a buddy skipped classes to take turns entering the whole thing into one of the school lab's TRS-80s... got the supervisor to help us out on attaching a recorder to save it to tape... he asked us if we had ran the program - what do you mean RUN the program? <- us. Rookie lab assistant comes in with the tape recorder, connects it to the computer, one ZAP! on the screen and I guess I was literate enough to understand the power of the static charge: the bloke caused the TRS-80 to reset and we lost 2 hours of typing in a microsecond. I had read about that in Popular Electronics late 70s. Six months after me and my posse were banned from the computer lab for a month for installing games in all the lab machines. It could have been that or the "fake" report cards we manufactured for those people in need of presenting something more palatable to their parents than the official ones :cool: -- RP
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Punched card had big advantages over "Modern" editors and HDDs. They taught you to write concise, efficient programs. Otherwise you needed wheels to move your code around! We didn't have "copy'n'paste", we had "drag'n'hernia"! That stuff got heavy quickly :laugh:
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
You left out "knocking over the card stack of the guy/gal you didn't like". My first program was a COBOL program, punched in, then fed to a 370/115. I was in my first semester of a Business Administration degree, fell in love with coding, transferred to a 2 year state tech, got an AS in coding and never looked back. Fortunately for me I never actually had to work on a Mainframe, PC's & 'Mini' computers were just coming into vogue, so that's what I've always worked on. C first, x86 asm, then C++.
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Punched card had big advantages over "Modern" editors and HDDs. They taught you to write concise, efficient programs. Otherwise you needed wheels to move your code around! We didn't have "copy'n'paste", we had "drag'n'hernia"! That stuff got heavy quickly :laugh:
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
Using punched cards taught me how to delicately fit a chad back into a mis-punched hole, and keep it in place with sticky tape. And clog up the card reader.
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Very, very, very. I didn't even see a computer until about six months after I started coding - we used punch cards in those days - being able to use a terminal and even an editor (poor by modern standards as it was) was a brilliant revelation! "Turning the computer on" had to wait about another year and the 5th computer I used: a PDP8. And starting that box was a bit harder than today:
Turn key to POWER.
Set all switches to 0
Click on EXTD
Set switches to 0x0018
Click on ADDR
Set switches to 0x0DE3
Click on DEP
Set switches to 0x0A19
Click on DEP
Set switches to 0x0080
Click on ADDR
Click on CLR
Verify HALT and STEP are up
Click on CONT(I cheated and checked the exact values, but I remembered it pretty well: only one digit error!)
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
I started on an ICL 1901, which was also switch operated. I can't remember all the switch combinations, but I seem to recall that to load a program required the use of the index and middle fingers on the left hand, and the index finger on the right hand, followed by pressing the green (I think) button.
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Yeah, with a separate attributes plane mapped at 0x5000 - so a massive hole in the memory preventing the EPROM being bigger than 16Kb... and no MMU in those days! I loved the HD64180 when we started using that because of the 1Mb memory space and a built in MMU. Bliss! And the SIO came in handy too. I was still using that in some new equipment designs in 2000, in its 32MHz form (purely because of the legacy Z80 code base, I moved to Arm processors as quickly as I could)
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
I also loved the Z80 because it was easy to memorise all the opcodes. I progressed to RML380Z from a home brew 8080 machine which I had to program in hex. Those were the days.
I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
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There wasn't even a damn keyboard, half the time! :laugh:
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P
Very... My first programming experience was a Timex-Sinclair 1000 connected to a TV. Working the graveyard shift, I stayed up one morning to punch in a sample program from book or maybe it was in it's documentation. Hated the membrane keyboard. Hours and a few cups of coffee later I had a battleship game running in console basic. Then I wondered if I could modify it some it could continue to plot the cannon shot up beyond the top of TV screen. I made the change. Try it. It worked. I was hooked. Of course there was no storage. As soon as I turned it off, everything was gone.
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Define Computer Literacy. When I wrote my first program I could plug the Commodore 64 into the TV, turn it on, get to the bit to type in the code and then run it. There wasn't a lot else to do, I could also put the tapes for the games into the tape player to load and then start the games.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
Same here... only it was an Atari 400. I had a few programs written to audio tape that are lost to the ages. Probably taped over with White Lion or Def Leppard :doh: So I was very computer illiterate - the personal computer at that time would have been maybe a Heathkit that you built from the ground up, but that was not my level of dedication. First program? I remember staying up late getting my name to march around the screen in different ways. Good times. Good times *sigh*
