| Had the exact same experience with C= 64 and the guidebook that came with it. Never thought I was doing something silly peek/poke'ing memory and using data segments to represent sprites on screen. I was adding numbers to represent pixels on a 16 bit row as soon as I learned how addition worked at school. Later on, I was using sin/cos to represent motion as soon as I learned how trigonometry worked at school. Along with some bresenham algorithms book I found at a university to draw lines and circles more correctly and effectively. Some time later, I was visualizing prime numbers and geometric primitives in ways I could only imagine. Later, I was using derivatives to represent optimal solutions to targeting problems as soon as I learned how differential equations worked. Later, I was using field equations to represent gravitational pull in n-body simulations as soon as I learned about them. Then things became more abstract, like visualizing finite automata and abstracting logic circuits. Until that time, I did not need to leave the editor or download someone's libraries. It was all there. My age of discovery was a continuous experience that spanned over 10-13 years and defined my abilities as a programmer today. I was never ashamed of "putting two pixels together" or envious of kids that "could make a game in two weeks using stolen assets and unity" - a program that places sprites on screen using easing algorithms and accelerated graphics. More power to them. |