[HN Gopher] Memories: First Exposure to Computers
___________________________________________________________________
Memories: First Exposure to Computers
Author : furcyd
Score : 27 points
Date : 2022-12-07 14:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lawrencecpaulson.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (lawrencecpaulson.github.io)
| KineticLensman wrote:
| My first exposure to a computer was in approx 1979, at school. We
| didn't actually have a computer at the school, but a local
| insurance company did. So we wrote our small programs on punched
| cards (in a dialect of BASIC IIRC), and at the beginning of next
| weeks class, were given listings of our compilation errors! I
| loved it! It was definitely the future!
| solardev wrote:
| The insurance company ran your programs for the school? That's
| pretty cool of them
| tristor wrote:
| My dad has some similar stories from his time in university
| learning to program. This used to be commonplace. Insurance
| companies, banks, hospitals, and large universities were
| typically the only places with computers at the time
| (mainframes), and so in order to ensure they had appropriate
| pipeline to hire more technical staff they would donate
| unused computer time for batch processing to smaller
| universities/colleges to ensure students could run their
| programs. My dad went to a very small religious university,
| but it offered some programming courses, and they ran their
| programs by "compiling" their punched cards in order, rubber
| banding them, and then handing them in where they were all
| stacked together in an accordion file, sealed, and then
| mailed via USPS to the state university to be run and
| returned, it would take on average 2 weeks to get results
| back as printed output + your original cards with markings
| from the sysop. I still have all his old punch cards, he kept
| them in a shoebox in my grandparent's basement.
|
| Computers didn't begin becoming commonplace until the 1980s,
| and really the 1990s, even in business contexts or
| universities.
| froboz wrote:
| I'm fairly certain my first up-close-and-personal experience with
| a computer was when my dad brought home a Commodore VIC-20 in
| 1981 when I was seven years old. He was a (now-retired) aerospace
| engineer and Star Trek fan, so buying a home computer for himself
| was a dream come true. Of course, I used it far more than he ever
| did. He picked up a Commodore 1-button joystick and a tape drive
| as well, and we hooked it up to the family TV in the basement.
| While I didn't launch into a lifelong hacking career, I did have
| a lot of fun playing games (Omega Race and a Pac-Man clone called
| Snak-Man were favorites), along with messing around with simple
| BASIC programs and creating mock-ups of elaborate game screens
| using the graphics key functions on the VIC-20.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| I have a similar story.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| >BASIC is a terrible language, but there were few alternatives
| back then.
|
| Ah, but where are all the stories from people who were inspired
| into programming by using Java?
|
| I was wondering about Markus Persson (aka Notch) who wrote
| Minecraft in Java, but: "Persson started programming at the age
| of seven, using his father's Commodore 128"
| anadem wrote:
| My first computer experience: in the late '70s I built a
| 6502-based micro from a kit (Tangerine Ltd, in the UK) but
| couldn't get it to run, so the kit makers had me visit to check
| it out and gave me a working version to use in their office. The
| manual said something like "Start BASIC by typing 'BASIC<CR>' on
| the keyboard". An hour or so later when they'd found & fixed my
| build bug and returned my micro, I still hadn't figured out that
| '<CR>' meant I should hit the Enter key.
|
| Nevertheless that kit started me on a 40 year programming career
| bringing me and my family to California.
| dboreham wrote:
| Inverse experience: I had to realize that "Enter" meant the
| carriage return key ;)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Commodore PET at school 1kb of RAM
| dboreham wrote:
| 1K would have been sheer luxury for us...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Kinda meaningless without context, what were you working with
| dboreham wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Yorkshiremen_sketch
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That was kinda my guess but I was worried you might turn
| out to have worked on the Apollo mission computer or
| something :)
| [deleted]
| rootw0rm wrote:
| 2nd grade, Apple II at school. I was hooked. Started tinkering
| with computers everywhere I could. Dad spent like 5k in 1993?
| getting a 486 DX2/66 with 16mb of RAM, 340MB hard drive and a
| gorgeous 17" Sony Trinitron monitor. That machine was a
| powerhouse at the time, I spent as much time as possible on it.
| zeristor wrote:
| My Dad brought home a plug-in calculator, I was excited by that.
|
| On holiday in Denmark a local bookshop had a green screen
| terminal that I was enthralled with, and there was the IKEA store
| terminals.
|
| I think a teacher piqued by my passion had arranged for a
| Commodore PET computer to be set up in our class for a few days,
| maybe it was just coincidence.
| coldcode wrote:
| My first exposure was in the 6th grade, around 1969 or so, we
| took a field trip to a local university with a computer. They set
| up a terminal to run the fox-chicken-corn puzzle, so each student
| got to try to solve it once. I kept wondering how a machine
| understood things about animals and vegatables. I retired in 2021
| after 40 years as a programmer. Never underestimate a good
| introduction to a subject for a kid.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| My first ever computer was a Christmas present, and tbh I was far
| more interested in the portable black-and-white TV that came with
| it. That got me my own dial-tuned TV in my bedroom. Luxury! I
| swear I could even watch snooker on that thing...
|
| My parents weren't well off (Dad was a docker, mum worked part-
| time as a travel agent), living in the pretty run-down area of
| Northern city (the cheap end of L4 in Liverpool, UK, if anyone
| cares). The idea of getting my own computer was something I
| hadn't ever really considered.
|
| So, the day arrives, and I get the TV (Wow!) and a printed
| circuit board with a bunch of components, otherwise known as the
| ZX81 in kit form. I spend a good month or two watching TV, as
| kids are wont to do, and eventually parental pressure to "get
| that fucking thing working, lad" mounts to the level where it
| can't be ignored any more.
|
| Go down to the shed in the back yard (for Americans, a UK 'back
| yard' doesn't mean a garden at the back of the house, in our case
| it was a small, cemented over 'private alley' to the real alley
| (where the bins were) at the back of the row of houses. My dad
| had somehow crammed a shed in there) - and started to solder.
|
| Took the weekend, as I recall, because I wasn't great at
| soldering at 11, but eventually it seemed to plug in and turn on
| - got the BASIC prompt and everything. Read through the manual,
| and there was a demo line to type in and show things were
| working. I worked through the example, got sufficiently
| confident, and the entire family convened in the lounge (where
| the only other TV was) to watch this modern wonder...
|
| I typed in: PRINT 2 + 2 = 4
|
| And it of course returned back the value 1
|
| At which point my dad sighed in disgust, muttered "I knew it,
| he's buggered it", and walked out the room. It took quite a bit
| of persuasion to introduce the concept of 'logical truth' to
| him...
|
| I've never done CS (I'm an aging physicist if anything from 30
| years ago matters in that regard) but I was hooked, initially on
| games, but also on what you can actually do with these things.
| These days I live far away from that 2-up/2-down Liverpool
| terraced house, in sunny California. Been working for Apple for
| nigh on 20 years, and coding for the last 40 or so. I don't think
| any single thing has changed my life more than that ZX81 kit. It
| wasn't even my _favourite_ 8-bit computer (that would be the
| Atari XL I bought when Dixons were selling them off for PS99 with
| a disk-drive) but it was certainly the one with the most impact.
| empressplay wrote:
| Around 1980 my Dad was taking computer science at the local
| university and he took me to the terminal lab and showed me the
| mainframe.
|
| We played some BASIC games on the mainframe. I was around 5 years
| old. I discovered an Apple II buried in the corner of the library
| at my school and I was the only person who used it! Then a family
| friend bought a VIC-20 and I was totally enchanted by it.
|
| My parents bought a Timex Sinclair 1000 and I typed in games from
| books into it, then a Tandy MC-10, Commodore 64, Atari 130XE and
| finally an Atari ST. That was 1988.
|
| It's fascinating to think back at how much happened during those
| 8 years, computer-wise...
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I still remember the exact moment when they wheeled an Apple II
| into my grade 1 (1980/1981) class on a TV cart and showed us what
| a computer was. It was an instant religious conversion and all I
| could think about from then on.
|
| I'm not sure it's actually been good for me, as I lay here with a
| chronically inflamed lower back and terrible skills in meatspace;
| but while it's consumed my life, it has brought prosperity to my
| family.
|
| The seduction of the virtual.
| fatnoah wrote:
| Mine was a full-on Commodore 64 kit that I got for Christmas when
| I was in 3rd grade. Everything was used and purchased from
| someone unloading their gear. To this day, I have no idea how my
| parents were able to afford it since disposable income wasn't
| really a thing for them until I'd left for college.
|
| The kit itself include 60+ bits of software (mostly disks, a few
| cartridges) from games to productivity (geos!), monitor, printer,
| disk drive, light pen, speech synthesizer, fast-load cartridge,
| 300 baud modem, and tape drive.
|
| Geos was my introduction to productivity and was used for all of
| my reports until we got a PC many years later, the modem
| connected me to Quantumlink (which eventually became AOL), and
| Gortek and the Microchips taught me basic programming.
|
| Receiving that gift was one of those things that really shaped
| the rest of my life.
| paparush wrote:
| My first computer was a TI-99/4. In 1980, I have no idea where my
| parents got the $$ for it. I'm 56 years old now and have
| supported myself and my family by programming for nearly 25
| years.
| kaveh808 wrote:
| High school in Paris. A PDP 11/32 running BASIC on a teletype. I
| learned how to make ASCII art posters copied from Creative
| Computing magazine. Independently invented/rediscovered run
| length encoding.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| My first exposure to computing was playing David Ahl's HAMURABI
| on a TRS-80 model I (I think) circa 1979-80 in 6th grade (but I
| think it was reserved only for us in the "gifted & talented"
| class). We took (or were told) to take it seriously and treat it
| as a mathematical/logical exercise, so we earnestly worked out
| all the values to input by hand before carefully typing them in.
| It must have been brought in specially, as I only ever saw (&
| used) it once.
|
| The game in question:
| https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=7...
| simmons wrote:
| In second grade, I and several other kids were given a demo of a
| TRS-80 computer running a tutorial of how to write a program in
| BASIC. The tutorial was about developing a program to calculate
| baseball batting averages, I believe. It asked the user some
| questions about a baseball game, and performed a few steps.
| Nothing unusual so far -- just like a calculator, right?
|
| But then it looped back to ask the questions for the next game,
| and updated the rolling averages, which of course took into
| account the information from previous iterations. My jaw hit the
| floor when I realized the immense power of being able to do
| things like this -- the possibilities are endless! Something
| changed in my mind in that very moment, and it's never changed
| back. From that day on, I was obsessed with thinking about what
| sort of computer programs I could write.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-07 23:02 UTC)