Jump to content
IGNORED

For the programmers...


Recommended Posts

22 hours ago, Max_Chatsworth said:

Do you remember your first useful program ....something of substance/note beyond:

 

10 PRINT "HELLO Max Chatsworth"

20 GOTO 10


What was your first computer you used...and what year/how old were you?  What languages and gear?

 

Are you still a programmer today?  If so what kind of work are you doing?  

 

 

My first experience was in 7th/8th grade junior high. One could sign up for a computer basics class that got one out of regular class schedule for about half an hour. It was held in the library where there were two dark brown Bell&Howell branded Apple II's. And your listing here was exactly the first thing we learned to program, though we added a semi-colon or something to the end of line 10 which made our names not just scroll up the left side of the screen but cover the entire screen in a sort of checker-board pattern with our name. I don't recall much Apple/Microsoft BASIC so I'm not positive it was a semi-colon or something else. I later took a BASIC programming class in high school using Apple IIe's. My first program was a bitmap picture of a space shuttle that had an animated robot arm that came out and blinking lights on the space shuttle.

 

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000 with it's BASIC. I've recently, in the past year or two, started teaching myself Atari Basic and Mac/65, when I find time, which isn't much so I'm still a beginner, but learning...

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My first computer was an Atari 400 that I upgraded to 48K of memory and installed an InHome B-Key keyboard.  

My first "useful" program was a utility to transfer tape programs to disk after I got an 810 drive.  It worked OK for single stage loading programs but was useless on multistage files.

I was already working in a "career" as Ford line mechanic at a local dealership, but when I joined the local Atari club I met a guy who knew a guy and that turned into a 25 year career at a local Industrial Gases company.

I wrote plant and laboratory control software in Pascal, Intel PLM, and PLC ladder logic.  I wrote Quality Control software in Visual Basic 6.0 and several business applications in Visual Studio Basic and C#.  I ended up doing End-Of-Life support for many of the applications I wrote until the whole department was outsourced to IBM India in 2010.

Since then, I've worked for an insurance company doing data transfer apps between legacy systems and modern hardware, worked at a sports car restoration shop, and am now doing document control work for a local medical company.

I hardly do any programming these days so I started getting back into Atari because modern computers are too difficult to work with anymore.  

I was lucky to get my old 400 last year and delighted that everything still works (except the 410, working on that).  I've since started accumulating more Atari systems and may need an intervention at some point.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

First computer I used was a zx81 and a vic 20 that my brothers mate brought round our house to show us, I was hooked immediatly.  Got a zx81+16k for xmas then quickly upgraded to an Atari 400 then not too long after an Atari 800.

 

First game I can remember writing was a version of crazy ballon on the zx81 (or it might have been on the Atari 400, it's a very long time ago).

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/17/2020 at 10:20 AM, Cafeman said:

My first "Hello" program was on a TRS 80 using basic in 8th grade.  My first useful program was in Atari 8bit Basic in 10th or 11th grade. Simple inventory management programs, and attempts at games. Made a Kaboom style, a mazegame style, and and Airwolf interactive story adventure game back then which was fun for exactly 2 plays. :)

 

Majored in Computer Science in college, and was in MIS / IT field ever since.  

 

Edit - it's funny how memories start to return after I start thinking about something.  I now remember I did a Blackjack game in Atari Basic. And some kind of space game,  ripping off Star Raiders.  I spent some time on this one but only partially recall it.  It had a hyperspace sequence where you tried to keep the scope centered. I remember at the beginning  of each stage there was an animated sequence where a vector space structure approached you , redrawn  bigger frame by frame... But I cannot recall the main gameplay at all now. Crap,  this is going to bother me now. Maybe I never finished it. 

Cool stuff. I got started in Atari Basic...on my 400 first then my 800XL a couple years later.    I also tried to write a game back in the day on my 800XL in basic with my buddy.  We realized quickly.."Oh crap...this is what assembly is for" and abandoned the game.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/18/2020 at 9:09 AM, Gunstar said:

My first experience was in 7th/8th grade junior high. One could sign up for a computer basics class that got one out of regular class schedule for about half an hour. It was held in the library where there were two dark brown Bell&Howell branded Apple II's. And your listing here was exactly the first thing we learned to program, though we added a semi-colon or something to the end of line 10 which made our names not just scroll up the left side of the screen but cover the entire screen in a sort of checker-board pattern with our name. I don't recall much Apple/Microsoft BASIC so I'm not positive it was a semi-colon or something else. I later took a BASIC programming class in high school using Apple IIe's. My first program was a bitmap picture of a space shuttle that had an animated robot arm that came out and blinking lights on the space shuttle.

 

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000 with it's BASIC. I've recently, in the past year or two, started teaching myself Atari Basic and Mac/65, when I find time, which isn't much so I'm still a beginner, but learning...

I'm like you...I dabbled in Atari/Apple BASIC back in the day....I'm a programmer today....and have recently begun to reacquire Atari gear and try to learn more Atari programming....would love to make a home brew game. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, Geister said:

My first computer was an Atari 400 that I upgraded to 48K of memory and installed an InHome B-Key keyboard.  

My first "useful" program was a utility to transfer tape programs to disk after I got an 810 drive.  It worked OK for single stage loading programs but was useless on multistage files.

I was already working in a "career" as Ford line mechanic at a local dealership, but when I joined the local Atari club I met a guy who knew a guy and that turned into a 25 year career at a local Industrial Gases company.

I wrote plant and laboratory control software in Pascal, Intel PLM, and PLC ladder logic.  I wrote Quality Control software in Visual Basic 6.0 and several business applications in Visual Studio Basic and C#.  I ended up doing End-Of-Life support for many of the applications I wrote until the whole department was outsourced to IBM India in 2010.

Since then, I've worked for an insurance company doing data transfer apps between legacy systems and modern hardware, worked at a sports car restoration shop, and am now doing document control work for a local medical company.

I hardly do any programming these days so I started getting back into Atari because modern computers are too difficult to work with anymore.  

I was lucky to get my old 400 last year and delighted that everything still works (except the 410, working on that).  I've since started accumulating more Atari systems and may need an intervention at some point.

Heh...like you...I also started on a 400(only 16K :( )   I wound up in C#/.NET world and do that today. I'm working on projects upgrading early/mid 90's VB6 code to modern .NET/web based architecture.  Thanks for sharing!

Edited by Max_Chatsworth
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Preppie said:

First computer I used was a zx81 and a vic 20 that my brothers mate brought round our house to show us, I was hooked immediatly.  Got a zx81+16k for xmas then quickly upgraded to an Atari 400 then not too long after an Atari 800.

 

First game I can remember writing was a version of crazy ballon on the zx81 (or it might have been on the Atari 400, it's a very long time ago).

 

Cool.  Yeah..i went the 400 -> 800XL route but my friend had a Vic 20 that we hacked around a bit on :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/17/2020 at 10:30 AM, evilmoo said:

In sixth grade, I wrote an Atari BASIC program to give me remainders from division problems rather than decimal answers.

Obviously not particularly intricate, but awfully handy at the time. :)

Nice.  Although we were an Atari family....having a 400 then later 800XL....this was during the days in the early 80's when they were putting Apple computers in school classrooms so I also had to write some Apple Basic programs in 6th grade for class assignments. I now feel pretty damn lucky my grade school was on top of things in that regard!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/17/2020 at 10:35 AM, Rybags said:

Can't remember what my first useful program or game was.

 

Early ones I did on multiple computers were variants of Surround (the 2600 game) and the Lunar Lander types.

And Escape which I later redid and renamed as Moon Shuttle (not really related to the arcade of the same name).

 

The best Lunar Lander game was on the 800XL, I did that in Basic + asm with a bunch of DLIs for plenty of orbiting rocks.

Man..I'd LOVE to see that 800XL Lunar Lander game. ....two of my great loves from back in the day. I started on a game in Atari Basic but we were aiming too high as far as our goal and realized we'd need ASM and abandoned the whole thing.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/17/2020 at 10:38 AM, Badaboom said:

My first was a whole suit of utility programs for AD&D on my Atari 130XE

Heh...me and my brother wrote some AD&D then later Rolemaster character sheet generation stuff on his 800XL back in the early 80's.   D&D drove many a youthful innovation in the computer arena back in the day I think!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/17/2020 at 11:55 AM, StickJock said:

First computer I used:  Wang 2200T in 1979.  I learned BASIC on it.

First computer I owned:  Sinclair ZX81 in 1981.  I ordered the kit version for $99.99 out of a magazine.  The assembled version was $149.99.  I later got the 16K RAM Pack for it.  I still remember the pain of having the RAM Pack come loose and losing all of my work.

Second Computer I owned:  Atari 800 in 1983.  It took me a while to save up enough money to buy the 800 & a 1050 floppy drive.  I used it with the 12" B&W TV I got for the ZX81 until I could buy a 17" color TV.  For a long time, I kept the B&W TV stacked on top of the color TV.  I programmed mostly in BASIC, but also learned 6502 assembly and did a lot in that as well.

Third Computer I owned:  Atari 130XE.  I had both Ataris hooked up to the same TV using RF and could switch between them.

Fourth Computer I owned:  Poquet PC, an 8088 clamshell portable that ran on 2 AA batteries, monochrome LCD CGA display, had MSDOS 3.3 and used PCMCIA cards as "floppies".  I got this one since I worked at the company in the early 90s working on the BIOS.  I had never used x86 assembly before, and was not familiar with the PC BIOS, so I was "clean".  When I started there, my manager had me first write a "Hello World" program in assembly using the microsoft assembler, then a TSR to do something simple.  After that, I wrote a simple character-based Pac-Man game (I used the solid & hollow smiley characters for the ghosts, and the <V>^ characters (they alternated with another character to eat, maybe the line characters - |, or maybe an O, I don't remember?) and showed it to my manager.  He said something like, "OK, you've got the hang of it.  Now on to some real work."

Fifth computer I owned:  AMD 486 DX4 PC that I put together around '93 or '94.  I didn't really do much with this one, and had packed away all of my Ataris by then.  I used computers at work all day and wasn't interested in using them at home, and had developed some other hobbies by then.

 

I still have the first 4 computers.  I'm retired now, after a career programming almost entirely in assembly language starting with the 8088, 486 & Pentium, and then on various common (Microchip, Zilog, Cypress) and proprietary microcontrollers.  It is not an exaggeration to say that my fw is in billions of devices. ?

 

Now that I have some free time, I have dug back out my Ataris and am getting back into them.  I do miss having a paycheck, though....

 

Wow...great stuff! Much respect man. When I was a kid with my 400/800XL me and my friend tried to write a game...a sea going combat game ..but we quickly realized "on crap...we can't do this in BASIC..." and ADM seemed like a bridge too far and we abandoned it.  This was 1982 or 83. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/17/2020 at 4:02 PM, baktra said:

My first program I was proud of was named "VEGAS JACKPOT II". It was a crude slot machine emulation written in Atari BASIC - three reels (no graphics, just numbers on the reels), but it had PMG overlays. It was written in 1995 and I was 11 years old. It took me three days to program, but meant a lot to me.

 

Next significant one was a silly game called Mr. GAXX. A white PMG character jumping over boxes made of GRAPHICS 2 characters. Multiple screens, energy indicator, joystick controls, collision detection, ML routine for quick vertical movement of the PMG character.

 

I once rescued the games from tape (it was "EMGETON LH" - my only Emgeton tape I ever had) and I still have these games. Good when you want to see something amusing or you need an deterrent examples for beginner programmers.

 

Yes, humble beginnings, but also a foundation of my later career in IT.

 

 

 

 

 

Wow....it's really cool that you were using the 8 bit Atari's to explore with in 95.  By them most of the world had moved past the ST generation/ Commodore Amiga generation and had moved onto 386/486 PC's.  By 95..I was almost done with my time in the US Navy and think my old Atari computers were lost to the dusts of time (i.e. family and friends who didn't take care of them for me :().  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, Max_Chatsworth said:

Heh...me and my brother wrote some AD&D then later Rolemaster character sheet generation stuff on his 800XL back in the early 80's.   D&D drove many a youthful innovation in the computer arena back in the day I think!

It sure did. Then again, playing AD&D made us nerds and geeks so, computers was the next logical step ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Badaboom said:

It sure did. Then again, playing AD&D made us nerds and geeks so, computers was the next logical step ?

Yeah...you're probably a better person than me, but I am a bit bitter and resentful that kids these days can openly be nerds without retribution...games....roleplaying games..table top gaming places....all totally fine.  In our day, those activities had to be kept quite otherwise there was a social cost! :)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, Max_Chatsworth said:

Yeah...you're probably a better person than me, but I am a bit bitter and resentful that kids these days can openly be nerds without retribution...games....roleplaying games..table top gaming places....all totally fine.  In our day, those activities had to be kept quite otherwise there was a social cost! :)

 

And I paid the price, believe me! ?

I was a nerd even before AD&D and proud of it. Today the kids get to chose what there are and it changes from day to day...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wrote a program for my father's job that did a graphical demonstration of a manufacturing process. This was done on an Atari 800 in Basic using the hi-rez graphics mode 8. I used a utility from either Antic or Analog magazine that allowed you to write text onto a graphics 8 screen. I really should dig through my disks and see if I still have a copy. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Badaboom said:

And I paid the price, believe me! ?

I was a nerd even before AD&D and proud of it. Today the kids get to chose what there are and it changes from day to day...

I was a bit of a Stranger in a Strange land. I was into computers and played D&D with my brother/friends..but I also was really into sports...so those two worlds did NOT overlap in the early 80's much!  LOL

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, DanBoris said:

I wrote a program for my father's job that did a graphical demonstration of a manufacturing process. This was done on an Atari 800 in Basic using the hi-rez graphics mode 8. I used a utility from either Antic or Analog magazine that allowed you to write text onto a graphics 8 screen. I really should dig through my disks and see if I still have a copy. 

Cool.  Yeah..I forgot all about that Hi and Lo rez modes for basic graphics....memories

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Badaboom said:

It sure did. Then again, playing AD&D made us nerds and geeks so, computers was the next logical step ?

My friends got into AD&D right around the same time we got into computers.   I was always looking for ways to streamline the more tedious parts of AD&D on the computer.  So I wrote various utilities.   Also I remember creating printing out fairly nice-looking character sheets on my Okimate 10, but I don't remember how I created it.  I didn't have anything WYSIWYG at that point, I must have coded it in BASIC.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Max_Chatsworth said:

Yeah...you're probably a better person than me, but I am a bit bitter and resentful that kids these days can openly be nerds without retribution...games....roleplaying games..table top gaming places....all totally fine.  In our day, those activities had to be kept quite otherwise there was a social cost! :)

 

I never telegraphed my nerdy interests in high school out of fear of what might happen,  however my friend was really good at connecting with other people in school who were into computers and D&D, and we had large D&D sessions with a lot of people from school at his house.    Turns out there were a lot more of us than you'd think!   lol

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, zzip said:

I never telegraphed my nerdy interests in high school out of fear of what might happen,  however my friend was really good at connecting with other people in school who were into computers and D&D, and we had large D&D sessions with a lot of people from school at his house.    Turns out there were a lot more of us than you'd think!   lol

True..I'm finding that out now from some friends I hand out with that I just knew casually back in school...it's like "Damn...Keith Stevenson...you were into D&D?  Not bad bro...."  heh....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Max_Chatsworth said:

True..I'm finding that out now from some friends I hand out with that I just knew casually back in school...it's like "Damn...Keith Stevenson...you were into D&D?  Not bad bro...."  heh....

Yes, my D&D friends were also the Atari programming and gaming friends, which were separate from my sports and BMX friends. And the nuns at our Catholic school somehow found out about our D&D sessions and told us that it would result in eternal damnation if we kept playing. Scary and fun times both.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Max_Chatsworth said:

Wow....it's really cool that you were using the 8 bit Atari's to explore with in 95.  By them most of the world had moved past the ST generation/ Commodore Amiga generation and had moved onto 386/486 PC's.  By 95..I was almost done with my time in the US Navy and think my old Atari computers were lost to the dusts of time (i.e. family and friends who didn't take care of them for me :().  

The explanation is simple, the former COMECON countries including Czechoslovakia were generally late to the home computer party and so was I. Businesses started aggressively adopting PCs since 1990 (before that, they had to rely on mainframes and minis, personal computers were scarce and adoption was slow), while 8-bits and non-PC 16/32-bits honored many households by their continued presence until approximately 1996.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...