I was 7 I think. My Dad came how with a ZX Spectrum and it was beautiful. Rubber keys, shiny box, rainbow on the side. It plugged into the TV and had a tape deck and we played Horace Goes Skiing.
Then I discovered BASIC
10 PRINT POO
20 GOTO 10
And in that one POO filled moment, I was hooked. My Mum even helped typing out listings from books and magazines because I was too young to have the attention span for writing hangman with graphics, but my love for programming stayed with me.
I recently paid my Mum back - my Dad has been playing with a Raspberry Pi and my Mum was talking fondly about how she enjoyed typing in those listings - so for her birthday 2 days ago I bought her her own Raspberry Pi and a Scratch/simple Python coding book to copy from!
I've noticed that a few people here were introduced to computers via the UK's golden era in the 1980's: Sinclair ZX80, Spectrum, BBC Micro and the Dragon.
Of course there was Commodore VIC20 (we had fights at school as to which was the best Spectrum or VIC20) and Commodore PET, TRS-80 and something called an Apple II (though I never saw one, very rare in my circles in the UK).
I was 7 I think. My Dad came how with a ZX Spectrum and it was beautiful. Rubber keys, shiny box, rainbow on the side. It plugged into the TV and had a tape deck and we played Horace Goes Skiing.
Then I discovered BASIC
10 PRINT POO
20 GOTO 10
And in that one POO filled moment, I was hooked. My Mum even helped typing out listings from books and magazines because I was too young to have the attention span for writing hangman with graphics, but my love for programming stayed with me.
I recently paid my Mum back - my Dad has been playing with a Raspberry Pi and my Mum was talking fondly about how she enjoyed typing in those listings - so for her birthday 2 days ago I bought her her own Raspberry Pi and a Scratch/simple Python coding book to copy from!
I used to sneak through the library in grade school and type
10 print “/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\“
20 goto 10
on all of the C=64 and PETs. Nobody every figured out why thise darn computers got all buggy all the time.
I've noticed that a few people here were introduced to computers via the UK's golden era in the 1980's: Sinclair ZX80, Spectrum, BBC Micro and the Dragon.
Of course there was Commodore VIC20 (we had fights at school as to which was the best Spectrum or VIC20) and Commodore PET, TRS-80 and something called an Apple II (though I never saw one, very rare in my circles in the UK).
I was the editor of both Acorn Computing (originally The Micro User) and later Acorn User magazines :-)
(My wife wants to point out that she was Managing Editor of Acorn Computing.)
🤣
That's great! Much more inventive than "asdf" over and over like I usually did when I started.