First experience of programming
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1975 on the 31st May I wrote my first program in City & Guilds Mnemonic Code assembly language. It was fed through a teletype on punched tape via an acoustic coupler to an ICL 1900 at Manchester University (about 50 miles away). It ran and produced the correct answer, first time! That's when I knew I had to give up my Law career and become a lumberjack computer programmer!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
Haha Amazing for those days. Just wished that lumberjack wasn't struck through. I like the idea of a lumberjack computer programmer. Has a certain ring to it. Reckon that JSOP would agree, except he doesn't like high heels on blokes.
"Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." Frank Zappa 1980
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
must have been 1984 commodore 64 basic v2 38911 bytes free the book was in German, useless to me. first program: 10 PRINT "YOUR NAME"; 20 GOTO 10 i wanted to do something colorful with graphics. i used to peek and poke it's memory and found out the screen map at address 1024-2023 and the color ram at address 55296-56295. c64 had a terrible basic. as soon as possible i moved to machine language. i don't know what was my first program, but i'll always remember my effort to move a sprite from left to right on the screen in assembly. it took me about 10 careful rechecks and restarts of the program to realize that it is working correctly and that it is moving the sprite soooo fast that i am unable to see it. it only appeared at the final coordinate. for comparison, in basic to increase the X coordinate of a sprite in a tight loop as fast as possible would crawl the sprite from left to right. assembly language was the kind of revelation you see in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the monkey faces the monolith.
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
1982 Apple BASIC on an Apple][ with 48k memory. Had a cassette tape recorder for storage and retrieval - no hard disk or floppies.
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
Early 80's BASIC on a Commodore VIC-20 My parent's wouldn't buy a ZX-81 as it didn't have a proper keyboard, so I wouldn't be able to learn to type on it. I still can't touch type to this day!
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
Many years ago, I bought my first computer, a Commodore VIC 20. Shortly thereafter, my dad bought a Commodore 64, but when he realised it was harder to use a computer (at that time, before Windows and Internet) than he had thought, he swapped me for my VIC 20, because he thought that I'd have a better use for the powerful Commodore 64, and he could make do with the less powerful VIC 20. :laugh:
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Mark Twain -
Oh, we used to dream of having 128K! :-D Speccy 48K for me, in the early 80s. (Once we'd been back to the store to get a box that wasn't empty, that is.) Combined with a set of Input Magazine[^]. (Ignore the publication years on that site; they were all 84-85.)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
1979 - 4 kB RAM. Yes, four! - R6502 1 Mhz 8-bit processor (same as Apple used in the Apple][) - 20 character alphanumeric LED display (uppercase only) I wrote a program in machine code (no assembler) to send and receive Morse-code; not for any real reason other than the challenge of processing in real time.
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I miss Heathkit. I built a variable voltage and current power supply from a kit that I used for years. 1974: My first programming experience was on a PDP/11, punchtape storage, teletype, BASIC, 64K RAM, and mag tape drive that if it drew too much current would crash the entire computer. 1977: Second was a couple HP calculators, the first being an HP-25 - Wikipedia[^] After highschool, I started programming on a Commodore PET. Onwards and upwards!
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Client-Side TypeScript without ASP.NET, Angular, etc.I miss Heathkit too. Build a lot of equipment for my HAM father. First programming experience was Fortran on an IBM 1440 in High school. I miss the punch card confetti we threw at each other! Then it was off to the Air Force and COBOL, where I learned BASIC on a friends Apple IIe, Star Trek anyone? We programed the game to go back in time if you went fast enough close to a star! Yes, we were geeks!
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It was about the time that I got the Extended BASIC cartridge that the cassette modem went out so no more saving...funny, it would load from it, just not write to it. I spent many a night playing the Scott Adams (not that guy) Adventure series games where the commands were 3 letter verb/noun combos like 'dri rum' or 'say yoh'. Fun times! :laugh: I still have mine in the original box...why I'm not even sure. :)
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
That reminds me of when we would get on the teletype to MIT over the ARPANET (pre-internet) and play ZORK! I think I still have some of the output! It was written in MUDDLE, a friend analyzed it and found some cheat like "Send for mail" which would get you a brochure in the mailbox and one point! :)
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
When I was a teenager, I first had a Sinclair ZX-81, came with 1k RAM< expanded to 16k :laugh: I wrote a few simple little basic programs on that, but nothing close to any production material. It could be done, even with it's shitty graphics; I had a cassette loading version of the popular game Frogger. I upgraded to a ZX Spectrum about a year later, and also only really fooled around with it's BASIC. Typed in lots of machine code hex listings from magazines thought, for some pretty cool little games.
"'Do what thou wilt...' is to bid Stars to shine, Vines to bear grapes, Water to seek its level; man is the only being in Nature that has striven to set himself at odds with himself." —Aleister Crowley
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
In 1975(?) I took a Saturday morning course for high school students at the local community college in FORTRAN on a Burroughs minicomputer. As I recall, I never did get a program to work. My first working programs were in Tiny BASIC on my stepdad's COSMAC ELF-II[^] single board computer, based on the RCA 1802 microprocessor. I also wrote a lot of programs for the TI-59[^] programmable calculator my parents bought me for high school graduation. My first professional programming in 1980 was on an HP 1000[^] series minicomputer in FORTRAN 66. I was a sophomore in college and was paid the whopping sum of $6.00 per hour. Not to be cliché, but - good times.
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
I had Digi-comp 2, and later, 1. Digi-comp 2 was powered by falling marbles, and the gates could be preset to sort the marbles in different ways.
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My first experience was a programming class on AppleII probably in the early 80s (1982-ishy ?? ) I remember the class room, it was a bright room, everything smelled new. And also on Sinclair zx80 at school (but again, I don't remember much).
I'd rather be phishing!
BASIC on a GE time-sharing teletype with punched paper tape for program storage in 1966.
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
Around 1980 - Commodore Pet at high school. 4K and 1MHz, I believe. Came complete with cassette recorder so we could even save our programs.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
TRS-80 Model 1 level 2 BASIC. Was barely in 1st grade. My dad had built and modded a second one so I got the first one with a cassette player, some games, and a library or magazines to "play". I managed to code a couple really simple games, choose your adventure, and a failed attempt at a Pong like game. (Graphical programming was hard for my 8 year old brain) One program I had was a menu for programs on a cassette. Menu program was at beginning of tape and had a directory of the apps and their tape counter location. Fast forward the tape to counter nnn and CLOAD. Fast forward 5 or so years and I got a 2nd hand 286 IBM compatible PC. Played around with GW-BASIC and actually started digging into Batch scripting. During high school I tinkered with QuickBASIC and DBASE (yes i consider it a programming language) but had found that all i would do is make menu and UI shells for the batch utils i made. I took more to the hardware/networking side of things. It wasn't until a few years out of college that I got my first professional opportunity. VB6 and Office VBA migration to .NET solutions. And here I am. Its sorta funny how I find myself doing the same sorts of things over a 30 year span.. Like little scripts and utilities and then building simple menu based UIs to navigate those utils.
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
My high school in the early 80s had these TRS-80s from Radio Shack. There was one course offered, BASIC. We saved our homework on cassette tapes. Each of the four or so computers had an old-style cassette tape recorder connected to it somehow. I remember a friend of mine and I were curious about what would happen if we played them as audio. I think it was just kind of random static. Off to college, various courses, starting with Fortran and assembler on a VAX 11/780. First professional experience was in EDL on an old IBM Series/1. This was very much like assembler; to debug, you'd get a printout of your program, on the left-hand side of which was the compiled machine language. Setting breakpoints at addresses, inspecting memory directly, etc. I feel like that was a good experience, made it easier to understand how software is actually executed by seeing some of the under-the-hood post-compilation results. Through COBOL, C, java, C#, blah, blah, blah.
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
1969, FORTRAN via punch cards on an IBM 370. The procedure was: 1. Punch cards 2. Submit deck 3. Wait somewhere between 5 minutes and several hours 4. Pickup output listing 5. Find typo or logic error 6. Repeat I think the program had something to do with using Simpson's Rule. Later on I did a lot of programming on a HP 2100 mini-computer via paper tape on a teletype machine. I remember trying to get something working late on day and out of frustration I randomly typed 'why' at the prompt. The computer responded with 'Why not'. HP published all the details on the machine, include the assembly language source code for the OS. I decided to figure out where the 'Why not' was coming from. It was extremely well disguised so it took a couple of hours to find it. It's pretty easy to disguise stuff in assembly language.
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
First program in 1964 on a Univac Digital Trainer in binary - no assembler or other gewgaws. Many commercial computers later, I built a Heathkit H8 in 1977 and used it to compute golf handicaps and other simple tasks. Now, I play with Raspberry Pi, WeMos D1 Mini, etc. I also placed in the age category.
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
Back in the 70's I got this educational thingy called "CARDIAC". Was a cardboard tool to demonstrate the workings of a computer. Had sections for memory and registers, and you would write in with pencil your program, and execute the instructions, etc. Very simple, but showed me enough to get me hooked. High school we had access to an old HP computer. Had a 80 character, single line LED display, card reader, plotter, thermal printer, and 4K of core RAM. Lots of fun doing plots and such. Also the school had an 1802 kit that I would do assembler coding on. First real computer was a TRS-80, and first computer job was during the summer when I was 15, writing some office software on a UCSD Pascal system. And I haven't stopped since 😉
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So - we have done the age thing, so how about the experience thing? In 1960 I was given a Heathkit EC-1 in kit form by a rich relo. I built it, and then programmed it to solve very simply calculus problems, with the output sent to a Heathkit oscilloscope - it was an analog machine! Then there was an eight year gap until university, an IBM 1130 and Algol.
