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I started at around 12-13, when I got a ZX-Spectrum,
and took the GSCE/O Level Computer Science cource in school. Oh what a blinder my program was "Whizzy-Q" a very simple mulitple-choice question game. The loading of the "Splash-Screen" took longer than the loading of the program. Screech.... one line of graphics, Screech... another....
Then after years of doing "other things" I got the chance of training as a Software developer and have not looked back since.
But the time I spent using a computer in the early days certainly helped during the training.
bum... and I thought I´d got rid of all the bugs 
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My slippery slope started with a ZX80, which you had to put together yourself! I'll never forget the thermal paper printer and the .5k of RAM!
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Me too! My dad got me a 2nd hand 48KB rubber keyboard Speccy. This was 1983. I started with ZX-Basic and was onto Z80 machine code a few years later. I remember writing some basic Z80 windowing code (to allow text "panels" to be displayed, saving the contents of the screen underneath) ON PAPER before laboriously typing in the machine code. I even had a C compiler (by a company called Zortech). It couldn't compile anything much better than printf("Hello, world!") but knowing some C gave me the edge at college and when I started work.
I had a little thermal printer for mine too (the official Sinclair one for which obtaining paper was a nightmare - it usually involved a visit to a computer show!). In fact, I got special permission to do my 'O' level computer project on my Speccy instead of on one of the school BBC 'B's! I printed out said program and pasted the thermal paper onto A4 sheets with glue! he he.
I also had a 3.5" disk drive - I knew of no-one else that had one - made by a company called Miles Gordon Technology. This thing was great - you plugged in the interface and, mid-way during a game you'd loaded from tape, you could hit a button and a menu popped up allowing you to save the game to disk! WOW! I was a true hobbyist (said disk drive regularly needed repairing too!). Having games on disk made me the envy of my other Speccy owning chums.
Other things spring to mind - the intense rivalry between Spectrum and Commodore 64 owners (they had better graphics and sound. Bastards.). The proliferation of computing mags with programs you'd stay up all night typing in before you realised there was a spelling mistake. Some mags even printed blocks of machine-code hexadecimal that you typed in - and a single mistake could lead to tears. The amount of independent shops that appeared in towns all over the UK was phenomenal - Newbury had 3 or 4 - I even managed to get a replacement rubber keyboard from one (all Spectrum owners took their machines apart right? And we all knackered our keyboards - always the bloody LOAD or PRINT keys!).
Eventually I upgraded to a 128KB Spectrum (the Sinclair one with the plastic keyboard, not the Amstrad abomination). Wow. I even wrote a commercially available program (a database called "File Master") that was marketed and earnt me some pocket money in royalties! I finally finished my love affair with the ZX Spectrum in 1989 when I was first introduced to the PC.
I has loads of kit (even some original Microdrives!) which I stupidly lent to someone in 1989 and have never seen since. Sigh.
Happy days. Being a computer nut was a massive advantage. It also meant I knew I wanted a career in computers within minutes of owning my first Spectrum and at 12/13, this is quite rare. I left school still feeling the same, so went and did a computer course instead of a couple of useless A levels and have never looked back. I just wish I'd thought of bloody eBay first.
The Rob Blog
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Yes, I did my 'O' Level on the spectrum as well. The print out was awfull, one and a half rolls of "astronaut toilet paper" 
bum... and I thought I´d got rid of all the bugs
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Robert Edward Caldecott wrote:
Other things spring to mind - the intense rivalry between Spectrum and Commodore 64 owners (they had better graphics and sound. Bastards.).
Maybe, but we had better Basic and better CPU (Z80A).
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My second computer was the Spectrum too (after the ZX81 )
A great experience!
Please have a look to this site about SINCLAIR:
http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/contents.htm
Manfred Becker (ManiB)
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I loved programming my aunt and uncle's C64. They had to drag me away from it to go outside and play in the summer.
If they hadn't done that, I'm sure I'd be making jillions now.
---
"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
-Wolfgang Pauli (1900 - 1958), on a paper submitted by a physicist colleague
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I also started with a Commodore 64C doing some basic programming for my math class. I remember making animated sprites too. I was fourteen years old.
It was really cool.
cheers!!
Daniel Cespedes
"There are 10 types of people, those who understand binary and those who do not"
"Santa Cruz de la Sierra Paraiso Terrenal!"
daniel.cespedes@ieee.org
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I too started programming on a Commodore 64.
I did everything in Basic. Remember when you had to enumerate every line of code? (Shudder!)
<br />
10 ? "Program starting..."<br />
20 ? "Hello World!"<br />
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hey that might actually help make code more consise and efficient.. then again someone would just automate the process..
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I suppose, but the part I disliked was trying to make your code changes/fixes in between. I use to think that offseting each line of code by 10 would be enough to fit any code changes in between, but when it doesn't, I found myself cursing as I incremented the numbers to all of the code below it. D'oh! 
Well, until I discovered GOSUB later. 
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And wasn't there a RENUMBER command, where you could specify the start line number and increment? That was some time ago, so I may have remembered wrongly!
I started on a Commodoe C16 (I can't remember the year, but I remember that The Queen (Elizabeth II) was 60 in the same year). I later moved to an Acorn Electron, Acorn Archimedes and finally a PC in about '95.
Sam W
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Oh those were the days:
10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10
RUN
---
"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
-Wolfgang Pauli (1900 - 1958), on a paper submitted by a physicist colleague
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That brings back memories. I started programming on the C64 when I was seven. I remember the day I hooked it up to a "new" TV and discovered that it could do color  it was mind-blowing.
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Did you had the "complete" ROM listings that DATA BECKER used to publish?
I still have the books plenty of annotations at the margins .
That was knowledge!
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I didn't have that stuff. My aunt and uncle subscribed to a C64 magazine and I would code all the programs they had in it and modify them to suit my own taste.
---
"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
-Wolfgang Pauli (1900 - 1958), on a paper submitted by a physicist colleague
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I spent many hours on C64. My fisrt computer.
Had so many lines of code, it would take a few seconds for the prompt to show.
There was not a renumber command on C64, but there was a few programs to allow it.
I still have many of my Computes Gazzettes mags.
I have even converted some function to VB5/6/.NET
Anyone remember Jim Butterfield? Is he still arround?
Schneider
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This poll brings back memories of the first programming I ever did... learning GW-BASIC on a Packard Bell 8088. ![Heart | [heart]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/love.gif)
I eventually "moved up" to Turbo Pascal. That was the bomb back in the day. But then I learned C in high school, then C++ in college, and so haven't touched Pascal in many, many years.
"I'd be up a piece if I hadn't swallowed my bishop." Mr. Ed, playing chess
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This was me back in 1993 a 13 year old junior high school kid seeing a working computer for the first time thinking he is learning the basics by running a program called GWBASIC.
It didn't make sense at first but a friend and I kept a book on BASIC from the library with us and we soon had a game done by following the examples in it. I was comfortable with programming before I even knew how to get out of word perfect.
After a while (15-17) with no PC I then learnt QBasic, COBOL, Turbo Pascal, C, C++, a bit of PROLOG, Visual Basic, Java (a bit), Visual C++, Delphi before settling with Visual Basic and InterDev.
Professionally I use VB.NET and C#. Haven't seen or heard about PROLOG since learning it and have never used it to do anything other than the excercises I had to do. I just want to see what COBOL.NET is like but otherwise I wouldn't lose any sleep if I never saw Pascal and COBOL again.
Let's make things simpler than possible.
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Does this include courses we've taken back in highschool?
Norman Fung
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I'd count it.
For me, though, high school courses helped me refine my programming. I had taught myself Pascal, but my code was horrendus. Didn't really grasp the concept of a function at first. 
"I'd be up a piece if I hadn't swallowed my bishop." Mr. Ed, playing chess
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That instantaneously put me back to 15-20 age group - and I'd still be considered a late starter!
Well, I guess it's what you are accomplishing that matters ** trying to alleviate some pain **
Norman Fung
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I can't believe any one can start programming at 10 or 12. If he's not playing games , somethings wrong.
Hari Krishnan
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pranavamhari wrote:
can't believe any one can start programming at 10 or 12. If he's not playing games , somethings wrong.
I started at 9 - just simple stuff modifying programs in the ZX81 basic books I had with the hand-me-down ZX81 I was given. But then I liked maths and science subjects much more than sports, so it's not really that surprising.
I did play computer games as well though
Ian Darling
"The different versions of the UN*X brand operating system are numbered in a logical sequence: 5, 6, 7, 2, 2.9, 3, 4.0, III, 4.1, V, 4.2, V.2, and 4.3" - Alan Filipski
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