What was your first experience in computer programmimg?

[zzip]

18 minutes ago, Tinman said:

I took two semesters of COBOL in college. I loved it!  Especially how easy it is to read.

 

I later taught some programming and used it as an example of an easy to read language.  For example, in C (and similar languages) if you have a variable called X and want to increment it, you can use X++.  Nice and concise, but not so easy to read later.  BASIC is better, using X=X+1.  But COBOL is the best.  If you want to add 1 to X, the statement is ADD 1 TO X.  (Including the period!)

Yeah it was very English-like, wasn't it?

 I also thought the "PICTURE" concept was interesting where you could define the rules for each piece of data and how it gets displayed

Of course I'm sure this is what lead to the Y2K problem as Cobol programmers would make the year PICTURE 2 digits instead of an interger or datestamp like you might in other languages.

[Tinman]

5 minutes ago, zzip said:

Yeah it was very English-like, wasn't it?

 I also thought the "PICTURE" concept was interesting where you could define the rules for each piece of data and how it gets displayed

Of course I'm sure this is what lead to the Y2K problem as Cobol programmers would make the year PICTURE 2 digits instead of an interger or datestamp like you might in other languages.

Oh yeah!  I spent a LOT of time on projects to fix Y2K issues.  And one software application I had to fix had a 1995 problem!  For some reason, in the 80s, it was decided to use two digits for the date, THREE for the month abbreviation, and ONE for the year, assuming that a digit from 0-4 meant the 90s and 5-9 meant the 1980s.  Insanity, but it kept me employed!

[bfollowell]

Basic programming in high school, circa 1983 using TRS-80 Model I & III. Basic, Fortran & Pascal on VAX system in college in 1985 & 1986. 6809E assembler on TRS-80 Color Computer 2 in 1987. Various Allen Bradley PLC versions, programming & ladder logic intermittently from 1992 to 2000, mostly on on overhead doors and dock restraints, but other industrial systems as well. I've spent the last 25 years or so pushing lots of paper and sending others out to actually do real work. My only experiences over the past 20+ years have been for fun. 

 

[Kenshi]

49 minutes ago, Tinman said:

I took two semesters of COBOL in college. I loved it!  Especially how easy it is to read.

I never liked programming languages that were too much like English. If my calculus teacher had written a problem on the board as "the integral from zero to one of x squared plus one," I would've dropped that class as soon as I got home. Likewise, I want my programming languages to look more like the language of math than English.

[ledzep]

15 hours ago, Kenshi said:

I never liked programming languages that were too much like English. If my calculus teacher had written a problem on the board as "the integral from zero to one of x squared plus one," I would've dropped that class as soon as I got home. Likewise, I want my programming languages to look more like the language of math than English.

 

Hahaha, I've always wondered how foreigners who didn't know English dealt with those programming languages.

[+slx]

39 minutes ago, ledzep said:

 

Hahaha, I've always wondered how foreigners who didn't know English dealt with those programming languages.

They just use the words like magic incantations…

[Cyprian]

my first programming attempt was Basic on 800XL wit 1050 (both not mine unfortunately) in 1984 or 86. I remember that program well, it was in GR.8, drawto bunch of lines from a middle of the screen to the top, right, bottom and left border.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Cyprian

[TGB1718]

20 hours ago, Tinman said:

Oh yeah!  I spent a LOT of time on projects to fix Y2K issues.

Ahh.. Y2K I worked for a major bank at the time programming in C on Unix (AIX), spent 2 nights

playing video games waiting for the bugs to appear, none did as we had prepared for it, but was nice

to get free food and many £1000's for the 2 nights

 

[Almost Rice]

1981-1983 Ti Basic in Elementary school   I dont remember anything here since we lost all programs when we turned off the machine.

1984-1985 Apple Basic in Middle School

1986-1991 ForTran on VAX/VMS and Mac in HS

 

1984 to present Atari Basic on my own machines

 

1996-2000 Intel ASM, C++ on PC and servers in college

2001-2003 Perl and workflow.

2003-2007 ADAbas and Natural

2007-present Peoplesoft on Oracle DB. PeopleCode and SQR.

 

my own stuff on Monday.com

Edited February 15, 2023 by Almost Rice

[baktra]

Atari BASIC, 1990,  I was 6. That exposure helped me a lot. Games and programming were a good incentive to learn English early. Fortunately, my parents supported me and paid me English lessons for children and computer courses 3 years later.

[Nightengale]

Sinclair ZX81.  The book that came with the computer is really nice introduction to basic.

[Heaven/TQA]

10 Print „hallo“

20 goto10

 

on a VIC20… and typing „BYE“ on a 600 XL in store… 😉

[oky2000]

lol I forgot about the BYE thing on the Atari's on display.

 

First time I ever did any programming was mid 1983 on a ZX81. We typed in some games designed by our Physics teacher in the school computer club. I remember one game we typed in was a Dr Who TARDIS based little game, which I recreated as best I could from my memories here...

Oddly this video was 1000% more popular than actual commercial game reviews I upload on average! 

[deffroe]

Christmas week 1985, Atari Basic.  The highly intuitive and comprehensive UK 800XL manual with its 3 type in's, only two of which would work.  The none working type in had been redone over and over, word for word, character for character.  Family came to visit just before New Years and a cousin asked if she could try, what would she know...girls...15 minutes later she comes to me saying shes got it working, How, I ask???  She'd started learn German or French at school so decided to type it in from that languages page.  How they'd managed to muck it up I don't know but in the English laguage of that one type in they'd spelt COLOUR.  In the French/German versions they'd used the American/correct Basic spelling.

[zylon]

High School, '91-'92 year. I took a Computer Literacy class, we learned Basic on almost exclusively, Apple II/e machines. I completed the class in 3 months, and they let me stay in it, to finish the year, long as I kept busy. I got into doing lost of short animation programming, using GR, vs the HGR capabilities. I would sit at home with graph paper, and design my sprites, work on the equations for getting it to move how I wanted, etc. Many of the things I saw from the 2600, I tried making happen myself. By end of the year, summer '92, I had even done a crude working game. Player was the blue pixel, and you had to cross screen with arrow keys, controlling up/down, with copnstant left to right movement. The playfield would populate with red pixels, as the asteroids to weave through. Each time you crossed the screen, you began again from left, but had a denser field to cross. I called it "Asteroids' Revenge"

Many years later, I began converting some simple VIC-20 games to play on my C64, without being just an upper left box. I'm considering dabbling in A8-5200 conversions, but I've much to learn of that address system yet.

[adam242]

17 hours ago, Heaven/TQA said:

10 Print „hallo“

20 goto10

 

on a VIC20… and typing „BYE“ on a 600 XL in store… 😉

You've certainly come a long way from those humble beginnings...

[Heaven/TQA]

14 hours ago, deffroe said:

Christmas week 1985, Atari Basic.  The highly intuitive and comprehensive UK 800XL manual with its 3 type in's, only two of which would work.  The none working type in had been redone over and over, word for word, character for character.  Family came to visit just before New Years and a cousin asked if she could try, what would she know...girls...15 minutes later she comes to me saying shes got it working, How, I ask???  She'd started learn German or French at school so decided to type it in from that languages page.  How they'd managed to muck it up I don't know but in the English laguage of that one type in they'd spelt COLOUR.  In the French/German versions they'd used the American/correct Basic spelling.

so... the COLOR statement for UK BASIC was COLOUR? or just in the listing printed?

[Heaven/TQA]

6 hours ago, adam242 said:

You've certainly come a long way from those humble beginnings...

yeah. it envolved into

 

10 PRINT "HALLO!";
20 GOTO 10



but yeah... it envolved little bit but in real life me not a programmer.

of course BYE and then switching to the sound test

 

Edited February 18, 2023 by Heaven/TQA

[deffroe]

19 minutes ago, Heaven/TQA said:

so... the COLOR statement for UK BASIC was COLOUR? or just in the listing printed?

Just in that listing printed, 2 of 3 were good, that one misprinted.

[mutterminder]

On 2/16/2023 at 5:50 PM, Nightengale said:

Sinclair ZX81.  The book that came with the computer is really nice introduction to basic.

Yes it was a really good book, but that keyboard is tortuous!  Still,  I ended up writing a full 16k Adventure program (learning to save frequently because of the RAM Pack) on that keyboard. 

[Doctorx]

Hitting BREAK while MarshBBS (Atari) was running and discovering I could modify it.. 

[kenp]

1969, the school system decided to get an HP 2114A minicomputer to see if high school kids could learn anything computerish.  We programmed in BASIC loaded into the 2114A via paper tape after switch registering in a boot loader.  We entered our BASIC programs on optical mark cards.

[_The Doctor__]

6 hours ago, Doctorx said:

Hitting BREAK while MarshBBS (Atari) was running and discovering I could modify it.. 

did you put that MarshBBS software on AA somewhere?

[malachykidd]

My 3rd grade class had an Apple II, but somehow I never got to use it.  At nine or ten years old (either 4th or 5th grade), I was given a lightly used Atari 800XL for Christmas.  I learnt Atari BASIC, then a bit of 6502 assembly (MAC65).  A few years later, I was given an XT compatible PC and I moved on to Microsoft BASIC.  I don't remember if I bought Borland's Turbo C for the XT or the 486 I received in high school, then learnt x86 assembly, Pascal, Visual Basic, Delphi, Java, and so on.

[Doctorx]

17 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

did you put that MarshBBS software on AA somewhere?

I was able to obtain it, but I have not posted it anywhere (not for any reason - just havent).. I can certainly do so however. It was a huge part of my life and the start of a ball of snow that just kept rolling and growing over what - 40 years..