[le-mark]

lol greetings fellow Basic pencil coder! I used to also write basic programs by hand because I didn’t have a computer.

Pournelle original claim to fame was as one of the authors of “Strategy of Technology“ which was very influential in the 70s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_Technology

[mlhpdx]

My people. My first paid programming was hand translating a BASIC app to C. I did it on the same paper the original was printed on (green/white continuous feed). When I thought I had it right I went to my mom’s work in the middle of the night to type it in and check it. Over the course of a summer I made it work.

The money went to buying my first computer (kit).

[rigonkulous]

Hail, fellow BYTE'ian!

I took what I learned from BYTE and wrote a CP/M terminate/stay-resident 'driver' that got some interesting hardware working well enough to get me the contract, as a teenager, to write the DOS driver for thing as well.

That led to a rocket-ride career through decades of systems programming, and I just can't thank the BYTE folks enough for those mind-expanding days ..

[contingencies]

Me too. We'd write and discuss them at school, then run home and try them out. QBasic, and batch file viruses. Ages 10 and 11. Fast forward 35 years and kids play minecraft, programming is dying, and modular desktop computers themselves are seemingly becoming a rarity between surveillance mobile phones and surveillance TVs. Disposable vape pens have more processing power and screen resolution than our household PCs back then, which cost thousands of dollars.

[SilentM68]

Yea, I hear Ya! I wrote BASIC programs by hand, as well at home while in high school for the same reason :)