How did you get hooked onto programming ?
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John Cardinal wrote: I thought everyone would answer the apple II or Acorn or something. Ew. Apple, the enemy! Trash-80 was, well, the name said it all. The best machine was the Commodore PET!!! :-D Marc My website
Latest Articles: Undo/Redo Buffer Memento Design PatternHa! In high school I learned basic on a Commodore SuperPet! That's where I became a life long devotee of bright green text on a black background.
"In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office." - Ambrose Bierce
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John Cardinal wrote: I thought everyone would answer the apple II or Acorn or something. Ew. Apple, the enemy! Trash-80 was, well, the name said it all. The best machine was the Commodore PET!!! :-D Marc My website
Latest Articles: Undo/Redo Buffer Memento Design PatternMarc Clifton wrote: The best machine was the Commodore PET!!! For 80's I thought the Dec Rainbow was nice. You had your choice of CP-M or DOS, it was rather pricey. I do not mind getting old. It beats all the other options that can think of.
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Today, evening, the neighbour's 12 (?) year old kid comes upto me with a DOS 6.22 book and asks me how to set up his CONFIG.SYS properly.. The reason why he wanted to use that DOS is really very interesting and I should blog about it sometime, but it brought back pleasant ol' memories from my own nerdy childhood ;) I was hooked onto computers not by games initially, but by batch file programming and later on, ANSI.SYS... (as my memory serves ?) and even the c00l things you could do with CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT ! Now I fail to recall why I found batch programming so much fun (maybe because you had to purchase GW-BASIC ? was that it ?), but I found using escape sequences and colorful stuff you could do with ANSI.SYS pretty amazing.. Infact, now I remember that PC Mag. (?) carried a full article by Charles Petzold on formatting the command prompt and stuff like that.. Norton's book on DOS programming during that time sold like the VB.NET guides of today... Memories... (but it's killing me that I can't recall why I didn't start with GW-BASIC ? Did the 5.25inch floppies from which you had to boot DOS have BASIC ? Don't think so - MS sold BASIC by ANOTHER set of discs in a box - but correct me if I am wrong - so .BAT was the only thing the OS offered free).. DOS 6.22 really rocked man on 66MHz.. anybody remember MSAV.EXE ? History repeats itself - eh ? Enough about me - how did *you* get hooked ? "God then made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the less light to rule the night" - Genesis 47:3
My high school didn't have its' own computer (this was in the '70s), just two TTY's with modems. We also didn't have any computer programming classes. I was pretty good in Math, and one time our Math teacher started teaching us BASIC. Then he assigned a program for us to write to print out a trig chart. He said we would get extra credit if we could get it down to 9 lines of code. He gave us all of the BASIC commands we needed, but not all we needed to do it in 9 lines. He did say that all the concepts we needed, we had already covered in class. After writing the program in 11 lines, I search through the math book, looking for something that could help cut down on the algorithm, and eventually found a discussion on integral values. I asked the teacher about that, and he gave me the INT function. I was the first to get the program down to 9 lines. Later, after I moved away from home, my roommate got a TRS-80, and a modem, which he used to dial in to the mainframe where he worked, and do some work at home. They also had some games in BASIC on the mainframe, so we would play those. One game was a dungeon game. Unfortunately, one of the rooms that we needed to pass through had a bug in it, and when we went through one of the doors, the game crashed. SOOOOO .... One weekend when my roommate was at work (boy, that's dedication), I used his computer, dialed into their system, and downloaded the source code. I then started debugging it. When I found the bug, I dialed in again, fixed the bug, and played the game, happily getting past the room that had frustrated us for so long. (Note: This was the first and only time I ever took this kind of liberty with a companies computer system and software, and I don't advocate doing it now). From that moment, I was hooked. I changed my major to CSci, got hooked on Turbo Pascal, then C++, Delphi, and now C# and VB.Net Roy.
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Today, evening, the neighbour's 12 (?) year old kid comes upto me with a DOS 6.22 book and asks me how to set up his CONFIG.SYS properly.. The reason why he wanted to use that DOS is really very interesting and I should blog about it sometime, but it brought back pleasant ol' memories from my own nerdy childhood ;) I was hooked onto computers not by games initially, but by batch file programming and later on, ANSI.SYS... (as my memory serves ?) and even the c00l things you could do with CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT ! Now I fail to recall why I found batch programming so much fun (maybe because you had to purchase GW-BASIC ? was that it ?), but I found using escape sequences and colorful stuff you could do with ANSI.SYS pretty amazing.. Infact, now I remember that PC Mag. (?) carried a full article by Charles Petzold on formatting the command prompt and stuff like that.. Norton's book on DOS programming during that time sold like the VB.NET guides of today... Memories... (but it's killing me that I can't recall why I didn't start with GW-BASIC ? Did the 5.25inch floppies from which you had to boot DOS have BASIC ? Don't think so - MS sold BASIC by ANOTHER set of discs in a box - but correct me if I am wrong - so .BAT was the only thing the OS offered free).. DOS 6.22 really rocked man on 66MHz.. anybody remember MSAV.EXE ? History repeats itself - eh ? Enough about me - how did *you* get hooked ? "God then made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the less light to rule the night" - Genesis 47:3
My dad bought Microsoft GameShop for me when I was about 10. It consisted of about 5 QBasic games, the QBasic Interpreter and a book Learn BASIC Now. The first program I remember writing was a little GUESS game which asked the user to guess a number and said if it was lower or higher than the secret number. I remember seeing the file stamped Dec. 25th, 1991 and being exactly 1000 bytes long. The second version used the RND function to get the secret number (yes, the first time it was hardcoded to 33.) Later I got a book on C (K&R 2nd edition, with the date handprinted, January 1992). And from then on, everything else is history :) -- LuisR
Luis Alonso Ramos Intelectix - Chihuahua, Mexico Not much here: My CP Blog!
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John Cardinal wrote: I thought everyone would answer the apple II or Acorn or something. Ew. Apple, the enemy! Trash-80 was, well, the name said it all. The best machine was the Commodore PET!!! :-D Marc My website
Latest Articles: Undo/Redo Buffer Memento Design PatternMarc Clifton wrote: Ew. Apple, the enemy! Hey!!! That was my first computer... I saved for a year, working my fingers to the bone, working my wrist into a bone graft. :) I actually wanted a Commodore PET, I forget the reason why I couldn't -- it was far too long ago. For some reason, either availability, or some other reason long forgotten, my choice was PC or Apple, the Apple ][+ was $1k less at that time and was the exact amount of money I had saved at that time (as in exact, not enough for tax). I remember I was very disappointed in not being able to get a PET, but I survived anyway -- and with only minor brain damage. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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Today, evening, the neighbour's 12 (?) year old kid comes upto me with a DOS 6.22 book and asks me how to set up his CONFIG.SYS properly.. The reason why he wanted to use that DOS is really very interesting and I should blog about it sometime, but it brought back pleasant ol' memories from my own nerdy childhood ;) I was hooked onto computers not by games initially, but by batch file programming and later on, ANSI.SYS... (as my memory serves ?) and even the c00l things you could do with CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT ! Now I fail to recall why I found batch programming so much fun (maybe because you had to purchase GW-BASIC ? was that it ?), but I found using escape sequences and colorful stuff you could do with ANSI.SYS pretty amazing.. Infact, now I remember that PC Mag. (?) carried a full article by Charles Petzold on formatting the command prompt and stuff like that.. Norton's book on DOS programming during that time sold like the VB.NET guides of today... Memories... (but it's killing me that I can't recall why I didn't start with GW-BASIC ? Did the 5.25inch floppies from which you had to boot DOS have BASIC ? Don't think so - MS sold BASIC by ANOTHER set of discs in a box - but correct me if I am wrong - so .BAT was the only thing the OS offered free).. DOS 6.22 really rocked man on 66MHz.. anybody remember MSAV.EXE ? History repeats itself - eh ? Enough about me - how did *you* get hooked ? "God then made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the less light to rule the night" - Genesis 47:3
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Today, evening, the neighbour's 12 (?) year old kid comes upto me with a DOS 6.22 book and asks me how to set up his CONFIG.SYS properly.. The reason why he wanted to use that DOS is really very interesting and I should blog about it sometime, but it brought back pleasant ol' memories from my own nerdy childhood ;) I was hooked onto computers not by games initially, but by batch file programming and later on, ANSI.SYS... (as my memory serves ?) and even the c00l things you could do with CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT ! Now I fail to recall why I found batch programming so much fun (maybe because you had to purchase GW-BASIC ? was that it ?), but I found using escape sequences and colorful stuff you could do with ANSI.SYS pretty amazing.. Infact, now I remember that PC Mag. (?) carried a full article by Charles Petzold on formatting the command prompt and stuff like that.. Norton's book on DOS programming during that time sold like the VB.NET guides of today... Memories... (but it's killing me that I can't recall why I didn't start with GW-BASIC ? Did the 5.25inch floppies from which you had to boot DOS have BASIC ? Don't think so - MS sold BASIC by ANOTHER set of discs in a box - but correct me if I am wrong - so .BAT was the only thing the OS offered free).. DOS 6.22 really rocked man on 66MHz.. anybody remember MSAV.EXE ? History repeats itself - eh ? Enough about me - how did *you* get hooked ? "God then made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the less light to rule the night" - Genesis 47:3
I am not hooked onto programming. It's just my job + my hobby, that's all. :)
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Today, evening, the neighbour's 12 (?) year old kid comes upto me with a DOS 6.22 book and asks me how to set up his CONFIG.SYS properly.. The reason why he wanted to use that DOS is really very interesting and I should blog about it sometime, but it brought back pleasant ol' memories from my own nerdy childhood ;) I was hooked onto computers not by games initially, but by batch file programming and later on, ANSI.SYS... (as my memory serves ?) and even the c00l things you could do with CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT ! Now I fail to recall why I found batch programming so much fun (maybe because you had to purchase GW-BASIC ? was that it ?), but I found using escape sequences and colorful stuff you could do with ANSI.SYS pretty amazing.. Infact, now I remember that PC Mag. (?) carried a full article by Charles Petzold on formatting the command prompt and stuff like that.. Norton's book on DOS programming during that time sold like the VB.NET guides of today... Memories... (but it's killing me that I can't recall why I didn't start with GW-BASIC ? Did the 5.25inch floppies from which you had to boot DOS have BASIC ? Don't think so - MS sold BASIC by ANOTHER set of discs in a box - but correct me if I am wrong - so .BAT was the only thing the OS offered free).. DOS 6.22 really rocked man on 66MHz.. anybody remember MSAV.EXE ? History repeats itself - eh ? Enough about me - how did *you* get hooked ? "God then made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the less light to rule the night" - Genesis 47:3
My school made me punch little rectangular holes in many pieces of cardboard, hand them off overnight to mysterious high priests in refrigerated rooms, and wait until reams of white and green paper appeared in a basket with my name on them; sometimes the holes caused interesting things to happen. I was moderately interested. Then I got a new job, and the company had a "computer." It had many front panel switches and LEDs, and was missing all the wires from the front panel to the motherboard. It was also missing all the documentation, as my predecessor apparently became distraught with his failed efforts to make it work and trashed the instructions and ripped out all the wires. I made it work. Then, because it wouldn't do much, I coded an operating system for it (in ones and zeroes) and designed a circuit to let it talk to an ASR33 teletype. Since it was still very hard to make it do anything, I then wrote an assembler for it to make programming a little easier. This was starting to look like fun. I got another job, designing hardware to test guidance systems of missiles. But the computers used to drive my electronics were too slow, so it became necessary to make the hardware smarter, and that required programming at low levels - playing God with electrons by means of assembly programs and writable control stores. It also meant learning a new O/S and language every few months as projects changed requirements and target platforms. This was definitely fun! Then Borland invented Turbo Pascal, and somebody came up with an O/S called CP/M that smelled an awful lot like the yet to be invented DOS; I was hooked.:-D Boredom, Bull$^%&, Baggage, Bar - all start with 'B'
Coincidence? -
I am not hooked onto programming. It's just my job + my hobby, that's all. :)
And you can quit at any time? ;) -- An eye for an eye will only make the world blind.
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And you can quit at any time? ;) -- An eye for an eye will only make the world blind.
Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: And you can quit at any time? If somebody removes my brain, yes :)
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
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Today, evening, the neighbour's 12 (?) year old kid comes upto me with a DOS 6.22 book and asks me how to set up his CONFIG.SYS properly.. The reason why he wanted to use that DOS is really very interesting and I should blog about it sometime, but it brought back pleasant ol' memories from my own nerdy childhood ;) I was hooked onto computers not by games initially, but by batch file programming and later on, ANSI.SYS... (as my memory serves ?) and even the c00l things you could do with CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT ! Now I fail to recall why I found batch programming so much fun (maybe because you had to purchase GW-BASIC ? was that it ?), but I found using escape sequences and colorful stuff you could do with ANSI.SYS pretty amazing.. Infact, now I remember that PC Mag. (?) carried a full article by Charles Petzold on formatting the command prompt and stuff like that.. Norton's book on DOS programming during that time sold like the VB.NET guides of today... Memories... (but it's killing me that I can't recall why I didn't start with GW-BASIC ? Did the 5.25inch floppies from which you had to boot DOS have BASIC ? Don't think so - MS sold BASIC by ANOTHER set of discs in a box - but correct me if I am wrong - so .BAT was the only thing the OS offered free).. DOS 6.22 really rocked man on 66MHz.. anybody remember MSAV.EXE ? History repeats itself - eh ? Enough about me - how did *you* get hooked ? "God then made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the less light to rule the night" - Genesis 47:3
I started using my brothers Commodore VIC-20, after playing the games that came with the package, there wasn't much else to do than program the beast. I continued the adventures on my C64, and at that time I had reached puberty, so much of the time went with making woman shaped sprites flying around the screen :-D Actually I wasn't very good at programming, and I didn't have anyone nearby to help me getting further, so it was much later that I took it up professionally. "God doesn't play dice" - Albert Einstein "God not only plays dice, He sometimes throws the dices where they cannot be seen" - Niels Bohr
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I started using my brothers Commodore VIC-20, after playing the games that came with the package, there wasn't much else to do than program the beast. I continued the adventures on my C64, and at that time I had reached puberty, so much of the time went with making woman shaped sprites flying around the screen :-D Actually I wasn't very good at programming, and I didn't have anyone nearby to help me getting further, so it was much later that I took it up professionally. "God doesn't play dice" - Albert Einstein "God not only plays dice, He sometimes throws the dices where they cannot be seen" - Niels Bohr
jan larsen wrote: "God doesn't play dice" - Albert Einstein "God not only plays dice, He sometimes throws the dices where they cannot be seen" - Niels Bohr Uhm, who does he play with? Were Einstein and Bohr believers in the multi-god concept? Or were they believers in the single-player dice-game concept? Maybe he played against his computer :-)
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Today, evening, the neighbour's 12 (?) year old kid comes upto me with a DOS 6.22 book and asks me how to set up his CONFIG.SYS properly.. The reason why he wanted to use that DOS is really very interesting and I should blog about it sometime, but it brought back pleasant ol' memories from my own nerdy childhood ;) I was hooked onto computers not by games initially, but by batch file programming and later on, ANSI.SYS... (as my memory serves ?) and even the c00l things you could do with CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT ! Now I fail to recall why I found batch programming so much fun (maybe because you had to purchase GW-BASIC ? was that it ?), but I found using escape sequences and colorful stuff you could do with ANSI.SYS pretty amazing.. Infact, now I remember that PC Mag. (?) carried a full article by Charles Petzold on formatting the command prompt and stuff like that.. Norton's book on DOS programming during that time sold like the VB.NET guides of today... Memories... (but it's killing me that I can't recall why I didn't start with GW-BASIC ? Did the 5.25inch floppies from which you had to boot DOS have BASIC ? Don't think so - MS sold BASIC by ANOTHER set of discs in a box - but correct me if I am wrong - so .BAT was the only thing the OS offered free).. DOS 6.22 really rocked man on 66MHz.. anybody remember MSAV.EXE ? History repeats itself - eh ? Enough about me - how did *you* get hooked ? "God then made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the less light to rule the night" - Genesis 47:3
I had a ZX81 and a ZX Spectrum. I couldn't afford many games. So I wrote my own. And so began my wonderful software development journey. Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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Today, evening, the neighbour's 12 (?) year old kid comes upto me with a DOS 6.22 book and asks me how to set up his CONFIG.SYS properly.. The reason why he wanted to use that DOS is really very interesting and I should blog about it sometime, but it brought back pleasant ol' memories from my own nerdy childhood ;) I was hooked onto computers not by games initially, but by batch file programming and later on, ANSI.SYS... (as my memory serves ?) and even the c00l things you could do with CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT ! Now I fail to recall why I found batch programming so much fun (maybe because you had to purchase GW-BASIC ? was that it ?), but I found using escape sequences and colorful stuff you could do with ANSI.SYS pretty amazing.. Infact, now I remember that PC Mag. (?) carried a full article by Charles Petzold on formatting the command prompt and stuff like that.. Norton's book on DOS programming during that time sold like the VB.NET guides of today... Memories... (but it's killing me that I can't recall why I didn't start with GW-BASIC ? Did the 5.25inch floppies from which you had to boot DOS have BASIC ? Don't think so - MS sold BASIC by ANOTHER set of discs in a box - but correct me if I am wrong - so .BAT was the only thing the OS offered free).. DOS 6.22 really rocked man on 66MHz.. anybody remember MSAV.EXE ? History repeats itself - eh ? Enough about me - how did *you* get hooked ? "God then made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the less light to rule the night" - Genesis 47:3
My dad started working at a brazilian company (Prologica), specialized in producing Sinclair and TRS-80 clones. I was 10, then, and I thought that those machines with all those buttons were so cool! Then, I asked, and I got a Sinclair ZX-81 clone (a CP-200), and, to use a computer in those days meant only to program it, so I started, and loved it! Actually, Prologica made the computer with two manuals, one of them that taught kids how to program in Basic and Z80 Assembly :) I see dead pixels Yes, even I am blogging now!
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Today, evening, the neighbour's 12 (?) year old kid comes upto me with a DOS 6.22 book and asks me how to set up his CONFIG.SYS properly.. The reason why he wanted to use that DOS is really very interesting and I should blog about it sometime, but it brought back pleasant ol' memories from my own nerdy childhood ;) I was hooked onto computers not by games initially, but by batch file programming and later on, ANSI.SYS... (as my memory serves ?) and even the c00l things you could do with CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT ! Now I fail to recall why I found batch programming so much fun (maybe because you had to purchase GW-BASIC ? was that it ?), but I found using escape sequences and colorful stuff you could do with ANSI.SYS pretty amazing.. Infact, now I remember that PC Mag. (?) carried a full article by Charles Petzold on formatting the command prompt and stuff like that.. Norton's book on DOS programming during that time sold like the VB.NET guides of today... Memories... (but it's killing me that I can't recall why I didn't start with GW-BASIC ? Did the 5.25inch floppies from which you had to boot DOS have BASIC ? Don't think so - MS sold BASIC by ANOTHER set of discs in a box - but correct me if I am wrong - so .BAT was the only thing the OS offered free).. DOS 6.22 really rocked man on 66MHz.. anybody remember MSAV.EXE ? History repeats itself - eh ? Enough about me - how did *you* get hooked ? "God then made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the less light to rule the night" - Genesis 47:3
Originally, back in 1981, I was planning on opening a Photography Studio for portrait work. I had a couple Nikon cameras and with my tax refund, I was all set to buy a new 110mm lens. Then I saw this ad for a Commodore VIC-20 computer. It made me wonder if maybe I should buy one to organize my photo library and pick up the lens a little later. Well, I got the computer along with the Datasette (cassette player you used to store you programs on audio tapes). The first day I had the machine I found that computers were much different than I had though. It was almost like I thought you just asked it questions and it knew all the answer, I did not have a clue what they did. Within the first 24 hours I was on my way leaning BASIC. The total addication had set in and within a few months I was starting in on 6502 machine code. I would say 6502 assembler, however, I did not own one, I had the debug monitor program which you edited your program right in memory, it was at least a year before I had an offical "assebmler". My first commecial program was ready within the first 12-18 months. It was called "Graphic 52", which was an extention to the BASIC that added 52 new commands mostly for simple graphics. I was not a business person and had no idea at marketing so, it never sold much. Before long I moved to the Commodore 64, then the Commodore 128 at which time I discovered Power C. Shortly after I moved to an IBM XT Clone with a single 360K floppy drive and 640K RAM for a huge $695. Fell in love with C and moved away from assembler and then C++ when Windows 3.0 came out (yep, just prior to 3.1). Borland C/C++ was my friend until V5.0 when it all fell apart at which time I moved to MS C/C++ and have been with MS products ever since. My addication was to the point that I spend over a decade pushing a schedule of mostly 30-36 hours awake and 10-16 sleeping. Time awake was mostly at the computer seven days a week. Could not seem to get enough. Was main lining technology. It was just TOO FUN! At least now I do manage to pull myself away after about 6-10 hours and have a small glimps of a life ;) BTW, never did get the photography library organized! I actually ended up selling all my camera and darkroom equipment to keep up my technology addication ;) It is amazing how the decades go by so quickly ;) Rocky <>< My Blog[^]
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Originally, back in 1981, I was planning on opening a Photography Studio for portrait work. I had a couple Nikon cameras and with my tax refund, I was all set to buy a new 110mm lens. Then I saw this ad for a Commodore VIC-20 computer. It made me wonder if maybe I should buy one to organize my photo library and pick up the lens a little later. Well, I got the computer along with the Datasette (cassette player you used to store you programs on audio tapes). The first day I had the machine I found that computers were much different than I had though. It was almost like I thought you just asked it questions and it knew all the answer, I did not have a clue what they did. Within the first 24 hours I was on my way leaning BASIC. The total addication had set in and within a few months I was starting in on 6502 machine code. I would say 6502 assembler, however, I did not own one, I had the debug monitor program which you edited your program right in memory, it was at least a year before I had an offical "assebmler". My first commecial program was ready within the first 12-18 months. It was called "Graphic 52", which was an extention to the BASIC that added 52 new commands mostly for simple graphics. I was not a business person and had no idea at marketing so, it never sold much. Before long I moved to the Commodore 64, then the Commodore 128 at which time I discovered Power C. Shortly after I moved to an IBM XT Clone with a single 360K floppy drive and 640K RAM for a huge $695. Fell in love with C and moved away from assembler and then C++ when Windows 3.0 came out (yep, just prior to 3.1). Borland C/C++ was my friend until V5.0 when it all fell apart at which time I moved to MS C/C++ and have been with MS products ever since. My addication was to the point that I spend over a decade pushing a schedule of mostly 30-36 hours awake and 10-16 sleeping. Time awake was mostly at the computer seven days a week. Could not seem to get enough. Was main lining technology. It was just TOO FUN! At least now I do manage to pull myself away after about 6-10 hours and have a small glimps of a life ;) BTW, never did get the photography library organized! I actually ended up selling all my camera and darkroom equipment to keep up my technology addication ;) It is amazing how the decades go by so quickly ;) Rocky <>< My Blog[^]
Rocky Moore wrote: Borland C/C++ was my friend until V5.0 when it all fell apart Tell me about it. They really blew it with v5 - the rumour at the time was all the decent developers had been pulled off C++ and thrown at the Delphi "VB Killer" product. What a damn shame. I remember when the first Borland Windows IDE (Turbo C for Windows) came out - it was amazing, especially when compared to MS Quick C for Windows (I still have a set of floppies for the latter). OWL was a pretty good framework too - and if C++ v5 hadn't of been such a dog, then maybe they would of lost fewer people to MFC (like myself for example).
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Today, evening, the neighbour's 12 (?) year old kid comes upto me with a DOS 6.22 book and asks me how to set up his CONFIG.SYS properly.. The reason why he wanted to use that DOS is really very interesting and I should blog about it sometime, but it brought back pleasant ol' memories from my own nerdy childhood ;) I was hooked onto computers not by games initially, but by batch file programming and later on, ANSI.SYS... (as my memory serves ?) and even the c00l things you could do with CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT ! Now I fail to recall why I found batch programming so much fun (maybe because you had to purchase GW-BASIC ? was that it ?), but I found using escape sequences and colorful stuff you could do with ANSI.SYS pretty amazing.. Infact, now I remember that PC Mag. (?) carried a full article by Charles Petzold on formatting the command prompt and stuff like that.. Norton's book on DOS programming during that time sold like the VB.NET guides of today... Memories... (but it's killing me that I can't recall why I didn't start with GW-BASIC ? Did the 5.25inch floppies from which you had to boot DOS have BASIC ? Don't think so - MS sold BASIC by ANOTHER set of discs in a box - but correct me if I am wrong - so .BAT was the only thing the OS offered free).. DOS 6.22 really rocked man on 66MHz.. anybody remember MSAV.EXE ? History repeats itself - eh ? Enough about me - how did *you* get hooked ? "God then made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the less light to rule the night" - Genesis 47:3
I started programming with my first Commodore C64. You remember BASIC? *g* Later on, I switched to a PC (486DX2-50) and took my first programming course in school. It was Turbo Pascal 7 which I liked very much. I also was kind of interested in electrical engineering, but I was more fascinated by programming, although now sometimes I miss fiddling on my machine, changing RAM, harddisk and stuff like that. In October 2001 I started studying computer science (at www.fh-furtwangen.de) and in Feb 2006 I am going to get my degree :-)
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Today, evening, the neighbour's 12 (?) year old kid comes upto me with a DOS 6.22 book and asks me how to set up his CONFIG.SYS properly.. The reason why he wanted to use that DOS is really very interesting and I should blog about it sometime, but it brought back pleasant ol' memories from my own nerdy childhood ;) I was hooked onto computers not by games initially, but by batch file programming and later on, ANSI.SYS... (as my memory serves ?) and even the c00l things you could do with CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT ! Now I fail to recall why I found batch programming so much fun (maybe because you had to purchase GW-BASIC ? was that it ?), but I found using escape sequences and colorful stuff you could do with ANSI.SYS pretty amazing.. Infact, now I remember that PC Mag. (?) carried a full article by Charles Petzold on formatting the command prompt and stuff like that.. Norton's book on DOS programming during that time sold like the VB.NET guides of today... Memories... (but it's killing me that I can't recall why I didn't start with GW-BASIC ? Did the 5.25inch floppies from which you had to boot DOS have BASIC ? Don't think so - MS sold BASIC by ANOTHER set of discs in a box - but correct me if I am wrong - so .BAT was the only thing the OS offered free).. DOS 6.22 really rocked man on 66MHz.. anybody remember MSAV.EXE ? History repeats itself - eh ? Enough about me - how did *you* get hooked ? "God then made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the less light to rule the night" - Genesis 47:3
My dad arrived home one evening with a 286 in the boot. It had DOS and QBasic on some discs and I was hooked by the second day. regards, Paul Watson South Africa PMW Photography Gary Wheeler wrote: It's people like you that keep me heading for my big debut on CNN...
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jan larsen wrote: "God doesn't play dice" - Albert Einstein "God not only plays dice, He sometimes throws the dices where they cannot be seen" - Niels Bohr Uhm, who does he play with? Were Einstein and Bohr believers in the multi-god concept? Or were they believers in the single-player dice-game concept? Maybe he played against his computer :-)
Nishant Sivakumar wrote: Uhm, who does he play with? Were Einstein and Bohr believers in the multi-god concept? Or were they believers in the single-player dice-game concept? You don't know? Actually God plays AD&D, and he's damn good dungeon master :-D Nishant Sivakumar wrote: Maybe he played against his computer Do you know why God doesn't listen to prayers? .... He is programming. :-D David Never forget: "Stay kul and happy" (I.A.)
David's thoughts / dnhsoftware.org / MyHTMLTidy -
Seems like more than a few of us got started on Radio Shack specials. I thought everyone would answer the apple II or Acorn or something.
"In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office." - Ambrose Bierce
Yeah, my first programming experience(*) was on a TRS 80 when I was 5 or 6 (It's still in my parent's attic somewhere)- my dad grabbed it from a skip when his uni was upgrading From there I got a Spectrum+3 when I was 10, then an Amiga 500 when I was about 15, then a more powerful (towered A1200) Amiga when I went off to Uni, followed by an assortment of cobbled together PCs * My first computing experience was when I was about 2, and I sat and doodled for hours on MacPaint on one of the original all-in one Macs -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit! Buzzwords!