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by KingOfCoders 571 days ago
My memory on the Sinclairs is their keyboards too, horrible, that was the reason I didn't take them serious as a kid (they felt like a Fisher toy), used a ViC20 in a department store to learn coding and then bought an Amstrad CPC - mostly because of the 80 character screen vs. the C64.
2 comments
Jare 571 days ago
Another department store squatter here along with my brother. It was crazy to think this is how we learned to program, but it made sense at the time. We went for the ZX Spectrum and eventually wrote our first commercial game for it [1] with the rubber keyboard, it never bothered me.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgi6gndpTTs

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KingOfCoders 570 days ago
Love it!
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sourcepluck 571 days ago
> used a ViC20 in a department store to learn coding

How long did you spend in that department store? How did you charm the personnel into letting you keep at it?

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KingOfCoders 570 days ago
The personnel didn't bother with us, they didn't know why the computers where there. Sometimes we even made a joke, coding a 5 minute delay, then some loud sound, turning sound up, blocking RUNSTOP/RESTORE and then waited behind some clothes until the computers started very loud sounds and the personnel didn't know how to turn them off.
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