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  3. What made you start coding?

What made you start coding?

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  • H honey the codewitch

    Amazon.com: High Resolution TV to PC Composite RCA/S-Video to VGA Video Converter Box HD Video and Audio Adapter Converter Wide Screen for DVD DVR VCR Monitor: Gateway[^] This should get you what you want $20

    When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

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    dandy72
    wrote on last edited by
    #81

    I have one of those, or at least a more sophisticated/expensive version of it that includes audio (this converter from Amazon would be video only, would it not?). Mine's either no longer working, or there's something wrong with the conversion somewhere along the way, because it wouldn't show anything. I'll admit I haven't fully investigated all my options yet...

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    • D dandy72

      I have one of those, or at least a more sophisticated/expensive version of it that includes audio (this converter from Amazon would be video only, would it not?). Mine's either no longer working, or there's something wrong with the conversion somewhere along the way, because it wouldn't show anything. I'll admit I haven't fully investigated all my options yet...

      H Offline
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      honey the codewitch
      wrote on last edited by
      #82

      i think this one claimed to have audio, and amazon takes returns. it might be worth a shot.

      When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

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      • H honey the codewitch

        i think this one claimed to have audio, and amazon takes returns. it might be worth a shot.

        When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

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        dandy72
        wrote on last edited by
        #83

        Not seeing any link in your message, or did you mean the one you had already previously linked to? If you meant the item at your previous link...then clearly, it's only got RCA and S-Video for input, and VGA for output. None of which handle any sort of audio. Unless all the pictures are wrong.

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        • D dandy72

          Not seeing any link in your message, or did you mean the one you had already previously linked to? If you meant the item at your previous link...then clearly, it's only got RCA and S-Video for input, and VGA for output. None of which handle any sort of audio. Unless all the pictures are wrong.

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          honey the codewitch
          wrote on last edited by
          #84

          the description said something about sound, but TBH i just skimmed it. was assuming there was an 8th inch stereo output jack on it somewhere. *shrug*

          When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

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          • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

            Not really sure - it was many, many years ago. I just kinda woke up one morning thinking "religion is b*ll*cks and I wanna program computers". So I became an atheist* and my future was laid out. Never even seen a computer except on TV up to then, and had no idea whatsoever what it actually involved. If I'd had a dream about Spaghetti Junction maybe I'd have been a road planner instead, who can say? * I grew out of that when I realised atheism is a form of extremism, (fanaticism, call it what you will), just like being a god botherer is.

            Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640 Never throw anything away, Griff Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

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            David ONeil
            wrote on last edited by
            #85

            OriginalGriff wrote:

            I grew out of that when I realised atheism is a form of extremism...

            It would be nice if more people made that connection. Sometimes I think they hate for hating's sake. Just as some religious people do (ie, their views of Muslims).

            The forgotten roots of science | C++ Programming | DWinLib

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            • H honey the codewitch

              i was 8 when reagan was in office. I liked to read while eating breakfast. If not for that I may have never picked up that Applesoft BASIC manual that shipped with our craptastic Apple ][gs By the next year i was wiring stuff into the joystick port on the motherboard. 10 years later i was at microsoft.

              When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

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              Mycroft Holmes
              wrote on last edited by
              #86

              I'm lazy and I saw a way to automate the onerous parts of my sales job, generating quotes. My sales manager sacked me because I was sitting around playing with excel macros instead of out selling (and yet I still met budget). I went to my biggest client and offered to convert lotus 123 macros to excel 1 (which I had sold them) and never looked back.

              Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP

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              • H honey the codewitch

                i was 8 when reagan was in office. I liked to read while eating breakfast. If not for that I may have never picked up that Applesoft BASIC manual that shipped with our craptastic Apple ][gs By the next year i was wiring stuff into the joystick port on the motherboard. 10 years later i was at microsoft.

                When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

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                DJ van Wyk
                wrote on last edited by
                #87

                In the good old day before the internet shipped on convenient CD's (South Africa got mainstream internet way later than 1st world countries) we played all the games we could get our hands on. Once we finished them all the only thing to do was to write our own games. I was still in primary school at the time. First year was QBASIC, but luckily 9 years of Turbo Pascal followed. I coded graphics for more than 5 years before I wrote my first "Hello World" console app.

                My plan is to live forever ... so far so good

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                • D DJ van Wyk

                  In the good old day before the internet shipped on convenient CD's (South Africa got mainstream internet way later than 1st world countries) we played all the games we could get our hands on. Once we finished them all the only thing to do was to write our own games. I was still in primary school at the time. First year was QBASIC, but luckily 9 years of Turbo Pascal followed. I coded graphics for more than 5 years before I wrote my first "Hello World" console app.

                  My plan is to live forever ... so far so good

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                  honey the codewitch
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #88

                  haha I loved QuickBASIC (the compilable version of qbasic" way back when. +1

                  When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

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                  • H honey the codewitch

                    i was 8 when reagan was in office. I liked to read while eating breakfast. If not for that I may have never picked up that Applesoft BASIC manual that shipped with our craptastic Apple ][gs By the next year i was wiring stuff into the joystick port on the motherboard. 10 years later i was at microsoft.

                    When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

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                    B Offline
                    Bajaja
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #89

                    'puzzle solving' and curiosity how to achieve something (align objects on screen, draw colors, calculate results of expressions...).

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                    • B Bajaja

                      'puzzle solving' and curiosity how to achieve something (align objects on screen, draw colors, calculate results of expressions...).

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                      honey the codewitch
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #90

                      you sound like a fellow tinkerer. =)

                      When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

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                      • H honey the codewitch

                        you sound like a fellow tinkerer. =)

                        When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

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                        B Offline
                        Bajaja
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #91

                        naaah, just pretending :-D

                        H 1 Reply Last reply
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                        • H honey the codewitch

                          i was 8 when reagan was in office. I liked to read while eating breakfast. If not for that I may have never picked up that Applesoft BASIC manual that shipped with our craptastic Apple ][gs By the next year i was wiring stuff into the joystick port on the motherboard. 10 years later i was at microsoft.

                          When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

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                          Roger Wright
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #92

                          Before I started college, I knew I was going to have to learn programming as part of a BSEEE degree education. I found a book at the local library on FORTRAN II, and I think I memorized it. As a result, I aced my one programming class. My interest was in the analog and RF stuff that took math and physics knowledge that the digital kids couldn't fathom, so never followed up with it. But in my second year, I got a job at another, private, University, and they had a project that had been abandoned as hopeless by the previous lab tech. It was an Altair 8800, mostly assembled then ripped apart in frustration by my predecessor. He took the documentation with him when he left. I completely disassembled it, phoned MITS to get a new schematic, and rebuilt it correctly. It still didn't work, and I figured that it was a memory card issue - 4 cards x 1k. I found the manufacturer of the cards ($400 each back then) and after talking with their tech support, applied the recommended repair procedure - hook up the power supply tabs on the card edge connector to a variable supply, set the voltage, then increase the current limiter until something smokes. That worked, removing a solder bridge from a couple of the cards. Then came the problem of using the thing. There was no such thing as an application, nor an operating system, but there was a monitor - PL/1 I think it was - and the school was too cheap to pay for it. Fortunately, we had an ASR33 Teletype on hand, so I designed and built a S-100 card to allow the Altair to connect to the ASR33. Then, with the help of excellent documentation published by Intel, I wrote a monitor program to listen for activity on the terminal port. Once that was working, having to enter it each time in binary using the front panel switches on the Altair, I got it to send the memory dump to the paper tape punch on the ASR33. That took several tries, owing to power glitches that reset everything. But once I got that done, I could enter a mere 16 bytes of code from the front panel to make a bootstrap loader, install the tape in the reader, and toggle RUN on the front panel. From there, the powers that were told me that their students couldn't be expected to program in Intel opcodes, so I had to make another, rather long, paper tape. Still using the native machine code, I created an Assembler, which allowed students to write (and type) programs using the customary assembly language pseudo-English notation, rather than all ones and zeroes. Having done all that to make a collection of circuits

                          H 1 Reply Last reply
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                          • H honey the codewitch

                            i was 8 when reagan was in office. I liked to read while eating breakfast. If not for that I may have never picked up that Applesoft BASIC manual that shipped with our craptastic Apple ][gs By the next year i was wiring stuff into the joystick port on the motherboard. 10 years later i was at microsoft.

                            When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

                            M Offline
                            M Offline
                            Member 9167057
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #93

                            I started coding pretty much for the fun of it. I've been spending a huge heaps of time on computers for the sake of it and for the sake of fascination of tech. Coding was the next logical step.

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                            • M Member 9167057

                              I started coding pretty much for the fun of it. I've been spending a huge heaps of time on computers for the sake of it and for the sake of fascination of tech. Coding was the next logical step.

                              H Offline
                              H Offline
                              honey the codewitch
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #94

                              makes sense. although experience has taught me that when it comes to code, logic is overrated. At least 1/3 of it is voodoo. :-D

                              When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

                              1 Reply Last reply
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                              • R Roger Wright

                                Before I started college, I knew I was going to have to learn programming as part of a BSEEE degree education. I found a book at the local library on FORTRAN II, and I think I memorized it. As a result, I aced my one programming class. My interest was in the analog and RF stuff that took math and physics knowledge that the digital kids couldn't fathom, so never followed up with it. But in my second year, I got a job at another, private, University, and they had a project that had been abandoned as hopeless by the previous lab tech. It was an Altair 8800, mostly assembled then ripped apart in frustration by my predecessor. He took the documentation with him when he left. I completely disassembled it, phoned MITS to get a new schematic, and rebuilt it correctly. It still didn't work, and I figured that it was a memory card issue - 4 cards x 1k. I found the manufacturer of the cards ($400 each back then) and after talking with their tech support, applied the recommended repair procedure - hook up the power supply tabs on the card edge connector to a variable supply, set the voltage, then increase the current limiter until something smokes. That worked, removing a solder bridge from a couple of the cards. Then came the problem of using the thing. There was no such thing as an application, nor an operating system, but there was a monitor - PL/1 I think it was - and the school was too cheap to pay for it. Fortunately, we had an ASR33 Teletype on hand, so I designed and built a S-100 card to allow the Altair to connect to the ASR33. Then, with the help of excellent documentation published by Intel, I wrote a monitor program to listen for activity on the terminal port. Once that was working, having to enter it each time in binary using the front panel switches on the Altair, I got it to send the memory dump to the paper tape punch on the ASR33. That took several tries, owing to power glitches that reset everything. But once I got that done, I could enter a mere 16 bytes of code from the front panel to make a bootstrap loader, install the tape in the reader, and toggle RUN on the front panel. From there, the powers that were told me that their students couldn't be expected to program in Intel opcodes, so I had to make another, rather long, paper tape. Still using the native machine code, I created an Assembler, which allowed students to write (and type) programs using the customary assembly language pseudo-English notation, rather than all ones and zeroes. Having done all that to make a collection of circuits

                                H Offline
                                H Offline
                                honey the codewitch
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #95

                                so you're an engineer that codes. cool. =) we could use more. thank goodness we developers don't build bridges and skyscrapers is all I'm sayin' :laugh:

                                When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

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                                • B Bajaja

                                  naaah, just pretending :-D

                                  H Offline
                                  H Offline
                                  honey the codewitch
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #96

                                  me too.

                                  When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

                                  1 Reply Last reply
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                                  • H honey the codewitch

                                    i was 8 when reagan was in office. I liked to read while eating breakfast. If not for that I may have never picked up that Applesoft BASIC manual that shipped with our craptastic Apple ][gs By the next year i was wiring stuff into the joystick port on the motherboard. 10 years later i was at microsoft.

                                    When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

                                    M Offline
                                    M Offline
                                    Magrat
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #97

                                    Conway's Game of Life. I'd programmed it in the Tiny Basic, that was included in the ROM of my first home-made computer in the early 80s, and it ran so slowly that I learned 8080 assembler programming. My first 'real' language. I was hooked!

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                                    • H honey the codewitch

                                      i was 8 when reagan was in office. I liked to read while eating breakfast. If not for that I may have never picked up that Applesoft BASIC manual that shipped with our craptastic Apple ][gs By the next year i was wiring stuff into the joystick port on the motherboard. 10 years later i was at microsoft.

                                      When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

                                      D Offline
                                      D Offline
                                      dshillito
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #98

                                      In 1968 I was in my final year of high school. I won a prize in the University of NSW maths competition and at the prize-giving I met a professor who told me his son was making money out of computer programming. He recommended a Fortran IV course that he was running that involved a weekly lecture over the university's radio station and submitting via the mail batch coding sheets that were punched to cards and submitted to an IBM mainframe. Making money that way sounded more attractive than the part-time work I had at a supermarket so started. Luckily the first program I wrote (5 lines long!) worked. I still have the deck of cards and the printout today. So I was encouraged to stick with it. When I got to university the following year I found the Computer Science department, graduated 4 years later, and thus began a 45 year career in programming that finished in 2017.

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                                      • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                                        It was indoor work with no heavy lifting.

                                        Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640 Never throw anything away, Griff Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

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                                        DerekT P
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #99

                                        No heavy lifting? I thought you were old enough to have had to rely on paper manuals...

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                                        • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                                          Jörgen Andersson wrote:

                                          Because you liked it or because it needed fixing blowing up and redesigning

                                          Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640 Never throw anything away, Griff Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

                                          D Offline
                                          D Offline
                                          DerekT P
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #100

                                          I walked under spaghetti junction (many canals, not to mention the railway) several times while it was under construction. Only a 15 minute walk from school. It was strangely beautiful then (especially with arcs of motorway several layer up, just in isolation and not joining up). But didn't dream about it, so stuck with IT DP. (Data Processing)

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