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What was your first microcomputer upgrade?


Keatah

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It's true in my case. I was writing simple BASIC programs and saving them to cassette for over a year before figuring out how to put more memory in my 600XL.

Having 64kb opened up the bulk of Atari's game library and I spent most of my time thereafter on that. Buying a floppy drive opened the door to even more games!

 

X2 - Writing your own programs and typing in BASIC listings was the way to learn Mr Miyagi style, much more effective than the class room curriculums that emerged later. High school science text books only recently dropped the BASIC examples, but there isn't a commensurate alternative available.

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X2 - Writing your own programs and typing in BASIC listings was the way to learn Mr Miyagi style, much more effective than the class room curriculums that emerged later.

 

In some ways, yes - but in other ways, no. I wrote many many programs and learned on my own - specifically because I had a low-spec computer with a pathetic amount of games. I made my own games. However, years later, when taking some of the first computer classes, I realized that my code was a spaghetti nightmare and I had to re-learn how to properly code - with commenting and proper structures. (and I eventually went back and re-wrote all my games and they were much more efficient)

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In some ways, yes - but in other ways, no. I wrote many many programs and learned on my own - specifically because I had a low-spec computer with a pathetic amount of games. I made my own games. However, years later, when taking some of the first computer classes, I realized that my code was a spaghetti nightmare and I had to re-learn how to properly code - with commenting and proper structures. (and I eventually went back and re-wrote all my games and they were much more efficient)

 

Agree rewriting your game programs over again is a tremendous learning experience where you get more optimized and efficient, particularly with multiple rewrites of the same games.

 

Logic is logic though and early years spent learning count more just like with Olympic Chess players - they've all been at it since age 5.

 

You probably could code circles around your comp sci instructor using just vanilla BASIC - most comp sci professors can't actually code anything useful let alone cool games so they compensate with "structure and semantics" and endless interfaces calling interfaces in lieu of functional programming.

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Agree rewriting your game programs over again is a tremendous learning experience where you get more optimized and efficient, particularly with multiple rewrites of the same games.

 

Not to mention both impressive and embarrassing at the same time. I have been re-working some of my old TI BASIC games and finding some of the logic I used rather striking, but the surrounding code... well, I do accept I was just a young pup :D

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