First programming experience ?

[thetick1]

I recently found my personal holy grail of early computing!

I was at my mom's place for Christmas and while digging out some of my decades old Legos for my son, I found my first programming book from the early 80's!

 

So I finally got around and found all the programs on-line at 

http://www.vic20listings.freeolamail.com/book_volcanicgames.html 

and even the entire book at https://ia600707.us.archive.org/3/items/RetroGameDesignAndProgrammingBooks/CosmicGamesForTheCommodoreVic-201983.pdf

 

It was so much fun to see the games I typed in, and remembering all the hours of testing I put in to slightly modify the games to make them cooler.  It was also great to play the bunch that I never typed in.

 

Granted these games are all V2 VIC20 CBM BASIC with some PEEKS and POKES so they are pretty lame compared to even the commercial VIC-20 games but these jump started my interest in computers and my IT / Programming career.

 

What is your most fond memory of early programming ?

 

My wife just rolled her eyes and said yea we all know you are a major computer geek.  In my defense she never complains when my pay check arrives. 

Edited January 21, 2020 by thetick1

[+cvga]

Cool story. I didn't have that book but spent hours typing in code to play games from Compute's Gazette. I enjoyed changing the code as much as playing the games. Unbelievable that we were willing to spend so much time just typing in the code. I can't imagine kids doing that today (or even what the equivalent would be of doing that - waiting for their Xbox One to update?).

[thetick1]

1 hour ago, cvga said:

Cool story. I didn't have that book but spent hours typing in code to play games from Compute's Gazette. I enjoyed changing the code as much as playing the games. Unbelievable that we were willing to spend so much time just typing in the code. I can't imagine kids doing that today (or even what the equivalent would be of doing that - waiting for their Xbox One to update?).

 

My son who is 10 now but a bit on the autistic scale will spend a few hours modifying sprites in Stella or C64Studio.   He then is so excited to play his mods.  He's only interested in changing the graphics and not interested in the game mechanics.  A few times I did get ....the oh please please dad find the number of lives and make it huge! Hahaha.

Edited January 21, 2020 by thetick1