The Silent Penguin

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November 29, 2005

How did I get into computers

One of the current memes floating around the blogosphere is writing a piece about how you got started with computers. So I guessed you were all just itching to see what got me started. You were? Good.

Before I actually got into computers I think I had a programmable calculator first. You could program like 30 steps into it and that allowed you to write something like a moon-lander program or cheat at maths. After school we would also stop off at the arcade and play Donkey Kong or Defender. So these were really the first steps into computing.

Anyway. The first computer.

It was a Commodore PET. Not my own - but that of a friend. This was back in probably 1980. I can't exactly remember the year. Anyway, after seeing my friend do all this geeky stuff on his Commodore I decided this was for me. So, I got my parents to get me a VIC 20 as a combined birthday/Christmas present.

Now the problem with the VIC20 was that there were no readily available programs for it. So Frank and I often set off by train to a town near by to buy a copy of the UK computing magazines that were around in those days. And then we'd spend forever typing in the programs in BASIC. I remember the first one being "Duck Shoot" - where a canon would shoot shells over a hill and you had to hit a duck. All in block-graphics of course. If I remember correctly then the first program I wrote was actually a sort of Pacman clone written in BASIC and using the block graphics. It wasn't until later that I got the high-res module for the VIC20. Once I did have that though I started learning 6502 assembler. My friend had written an assembler program for the VIC and I used it to write some elements of a program. Trouble was that the assembler wouldn't fit into memory together with the whole program. So I wrote pieces of the code and then had the assembler print the values to screen. I would then write the codes on pieces of paper and transfer that to DATA lines to be POKED in the actual program. You can imagine what sort of mistakes that lead to. Anyway I actually got it finished and my first "real" game was called "Broomer". You had to control a little broom on the bottom of the screen and fruit fell down which that had to be swept up. Every now and again a bomb would fall down and of course the broom wasn't allowed to touch that.

Luckily our school was quite advanced in computer science and so I was soon learning to program PASCAL on the 2 Apple IIs we had. Before that we were taught LOGO - a language I always thought was ideal to get people into computers. We were allowed to use the breaks and after-school time to continue programming so it was always a mad dash to the computer room after a lesson to grab one of the machines.

After school I trained as a computer-clerk and during the 3 years of training I learnt COBOL and BUSINESS BASIC on Nixdorf machines. And from then on to C, C++ and Java. And of course eventually ending up working mostly on PC systems.

So in all I can now look back on around 25 years (oh my) "in computing".

Later: Frank adds his own story and expands mine.

Posted by Matthew at November 29, 2005 05:09 PM

Comments

Posted by: Martin Little at November 30, 2005 04:56 PM