[qnr]

Also, "Osborne 486, with about 64k of RAM if memory serves me correctly. "

First, a 486 with 64K RAM is ridiculous as they typically had multiple megabytes of memory.

Second, he worked with that PC for 7 years and isn't quite confident of how much memory it had? This doesn't sound quite right either. I can clearly remember the amounts of RAM my first few PCs had, starting from 1999.

[orangecomputer]

I know it had 640k extended memory via the startup memory check.

I don't know how much processing power nor memory it had. I had never owned a computer, and my dad left it behind for me after the divorce so I had something to use. I had no idea what was inside.

I'd agree that this would be a very relevant factor if I had programmed a "true" operating system (since most true programmers would probably be knowledgeable with the amount of memory usage going on etc), but to take things a bit more indepth, I suppose I haved't actually coded an operating system, but rather a dos Shell of sorts that is a facsimile of an 80s-style operating system. It merely uses the same commands as dos and interprets them into a visually descriptive feature on the screen (such as a split-screen with directory and file listings for example), as well as a few commands of my own that I added in. My terminology is not fantastic, but I suppose indicative of what I considered to be an OS. A Graphical shell might have been a more accurate term.

I remember the specs of all the systems I've had since then, but with the 486, I didn't spec it out myself, and was merely a kid with a computer at that point.

[DennisP]

Incidentally if you ever find you miss coding, there are plenty of modern languages that are much easier than C++, which is pretty much the most complicated one you could have picked.

[mysterydip]

I'd like to add: a language that may be more up the OP's alley is Blitz3D, a BASIC dialect for games that's recently become free and open source: http://www.blitzbasic.com

[DennisP]

Yeah that looks pretty cool.

A more mainstream option would be python. The free courses at udacity.com would be an easy way to get started.

[sillysaurus3]

Why are we trying to insinuate they're lying? Either there's evidence or there's not, and without some pretty strong evidence, this is just depressing. Especially from the point of view of someone who might like to one day present a project they've been working on to "the internet."

I'm close to someone who I've been watching slowly discover their passion for programming over the last six months or so. They never realized they'd care so much, or be any good at it. I've been giving consistent positive reinforcement, and I dread the day that they roll out their first real achievement to the masses. They might just throw their hands up in the air and give up entirely, judging by how people usually act.

[mkramlich]

I totally hear you and understand. However, two points to consider.

One, nobody's forced to share their project/efforts on the Internet, which is essentially the entire planet, all of humanity, 24x7 for all the rest of time (info wants to live forever, etc.) We are all free to keep our things private, off-line, just among friends, etc. You're free to approach people in real life you know for feedback, tips, encouragement. They're more likely to be polite, and also you're not asking something of a total stranger.

Second, there's been a cultural change that a lot of younger people or newbs may not be aware of. For folks of the pre-Internet, "first with computers" generation, that's precisely the standard operating environment when we we learning, just starting out, taking those early baby steps. When we were first scribbling out our first programs, however naive or full of bugs or flaws, we didn't immediately go push it in the faces of millions of strangers across the world (ala Show HN, GitHub, blogs, etc), a good portion of whom would be professionals alot further along, and say "omg look at this isn't it amazing I'm a hacker now please hire me k thx" -- we couldn't because the Interent didn't really exist and most of these modern ways of publishing and sharing didn't exist. So most of that early crude, naive, sometimes embarassing stage was done in private, off-line, or only among friends or teachers known personally. Today we have the equivalent of proud (and healthily, voluntarily deluded) parents posting their kindegartener's first crayon house-and-trees-and-sun drawings out onto blogs, GitHub, HN, Reddit, YouTube, etc and then being shocked or having their feelings hurt when others aren't as eaually blown away as them, and in some cases critical or dismissive. Its just the nature of the beast. Nobody forced them to share those things, and in that public global anonymous mixed (newbs/kids and experts/pro's) of a forum. They chose that. And it makes sense you'll also get back a mix of reactions, some of which you won't like.

What the modern Internet enables today has lots of great qualities (eg. I can download all this cool software for free, Wikipedia, Kickstarter, etc etc) but it also enables lots of sucky stuff (eg. eternal September, eternal kindegarten mode, arrogant assholes, FAQs, RTFMs, trolls, flamewars, phishing, astroturfing, doxing, etc.) Its hard to enable one without the other.

[sillysaurus3]

just starting out, taking those early baby steps. When we were first scribbling out our first programs, however naive or full of bugs or flaws, we didn't immediately go push it in the faces of millions of strangers across the world (ala Show HN, GitHub, blogs, etc), a good portion of whom would be professionals alot further along, and say "omg look at this isn't it amazing I'm a hacker now please hire me k thx"

No one was asking for anyone to hire anyone. I have no idea why you're saying this or belittling people's work.

If you can't be supportive, don't say anything unless you have strong reason to say it. Doesn't matter how far along the work is or how bad it is. If everyone followed this, the world would be a better place than it is, particularly the internet.

The lack of support is exactly what causes people to switch careers, because they get the impression everybody in the field is a flamer.

[andsmi2]

I don't think these are lies. I think this speaks to the level of technical understanding by the author. He thought 64k. He was writing everything in qbasic-- so a spec like that wouldn't matter. These are some good things to accomplish with basic, but it made sense when you get to the end and understand he is baffled with an ide. The term dos "clone" is weird--- I think he meant a sort of shell written in qbasic. This is essentially a "script kiddy" stuck in the outback. Admirable use of his time. I am scared about the level of worship the comments on the page provide.

[metric10]

I think "script kiddy" is overly harsh. Script kiddies can't program, they just run other people's "scripts." He clearly had some aptitude, he just didn't have the books or the right environment to learn what he needed to truly excel.

[nzealand]

You must be right.

I learned to code in machine language, I was punching in hex codes into an Amiga, all from one reference manual. It was a painfully slow way to learn. With no IDE or other reference manuals, QBasic would be the only way to achieve any of this.

[arebop]

I think the 64k RAM perhaps refers to the QBasic module size limits [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/45850].

[vidarh]

Quite likely. Many early x86 programming environments had limits around 64K due to segentation (e.g. early Turbo Pascal), so I'm not at all surprised that someone stuck with crappy old books and little access to information would think the machine had 64K RAM.

As an illustration to those that don't seem to understand, there was that year when I was a kid when my friends and I decided BASIC on the C64 was not good enough, and we tried to figure out how to get started with assembler....

Something that started with us trying to poke the character codes for BASIC statements into memory, unaware that we were not only still writing BASIC, but had "invented" a storage method substantially less efficient than what BASIC on the C64 already used (it was stored tokenized).. It took a long time before I managed to get hold of an assembler, and months more before I managed to get hold of a tutorial that got me anywhere.

This was with a group of 5-6 of us that all wanted to learn, but none of whom knew where to get the information, nor had parents that knew. My dad was programming, but only BASIC, and didn't know where to get what I wanted - few books were available, even fewer translated.

People really shouldn't underestimate how vital easy access to documentation is.

We're talking about a time when e.g. when I (years later) finally got hold of precise cycle counts for raster interrupts for the C64 (understanding precise cycle counts in the presence of sprites etc. was vital for many more advanced demo effects), it was a 3rd or 4th generation photocopy of a handwritten diagram that someone had partially learned from others, partially reverse engineered through countless hours of adjusting interrupts a cycle at a time to study the results.

None of the books I'd managed to get hold of contained even a fraction of the amount of detail.

[orbitingpluto]

arebop, why aren't you looking for the worst in people like the rest of us?

Frankly I remember playing with qbasic/basic and being put off by how unwieldy it all was. Kudos to any kid that makes anything in basic.

I didn't become interested in programming until I managed to get a copy of Modula-II off of a BBS.

[wolfgke]

> Kudos to any kid that makes anything in basic.

Relevant: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2033318/black-annex-is-the-be...

Homepage of this (incomplete) game: http://www.blackannex.net/

[kevcampb]

The confusion likely stems from the various limits which existed when running qbasic in real mode on a 486.

Conventional memory was limited to 640kb. Access to higher amounts of memory either required switching to protected mode or using XMS.

Additionally, there was the segmentation limit of 64k for pointers, which may have limited things in qbasic.

[metric10]

That seemed odd to me as well. On the other hand, he was programming in QBASIC and text mode (from what I saw in the screen shots). Nothing he did probably required a lot of memory, and since he never had access to new software, it was probably never an issue. So it's understandable. Unfortunately he wasn't left with a copy of Turbo C++ (or TASM) and a good programming book.

[dubfan]

Also, Osborne went out of business in 1985, but the 486 didn't debut until 1989.

[bitwize]

In Australia, there was a separate company called Osborne that indeed marketed the Osborne I -- but continued to live on and sell PC clones after the American Osborne went out of business.

It's a bit like Australian Woolworth's.

[juziozd]

I'm guessing this was about Aussie Osborne: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_%28computer_retailer%29

[chris_wot]

Yup, that sounds correct.

[Zardoz84]

640KiB !! Probably would have 1 MiB of total RAM and the BIOS shows that it have 640KiB of conventional RAM

[digikata]

He's probably recalling 66Mhz as the clock as 64k.