Seriously this time

I'm curious how old people are and how long they've been doin the "computer" thing.


I'm in the same boat as Noel to start things off. Except I started with an HP dinosaur on Win 3.1

Age: 27
Dont remember the year, but the first pc I was working on was a Apple II in Elementry School.

First PC owned was a TRS 80 and Comadore64 (with tape drive).

First started in programming back in 93 with qbasic on Win3.x

introduced to C in 95 with a 16 bit compiler during a pascal class (didnt think much of pascal).

Finally upgraded to 32 bit compiler in 97 on a 486dx.

Still remember the good old BBS days....

36
1980

16, started when I was 5 or 6 with an Apple II (I recall pushing it off the desk, whether or not this memory is truth is something I don't know), afterwards we got a bunch of PCs from Intel since my dad worked there. My dad built a PC from the ground up when I was 8, so most of what I know about hardware is from him. When I was 10 or 11 I got a PC of my own (an eMachine) along with a copy of Mandrake 6.5 (Linux). Screwed up the PC pretty badly trying to install it, so I stuck with Windows at the time. A couple years later I got a Dell, gave my eMachine to charity, and so on and so forth.

A few PCs later and here I am now.

22

First family computer was back in 1993, been messing around with them ever since.

An even more interesting anecdote: A single page of 3-to-5
line BASIC programs on page 76 of my 7th grade math textbook was the
trigger that started me programming. That half-page of little
"area-of-a-circle" algorithms drastically and permanently
changed my life. Isn't that neat?

18. Cant remember when my first computer was bought but it was Win95. And t5he most I did with it is play Hover (which was really good and should have been updated with the new Windows versions. When we got the internet it was about 1998 and my Dad got a book called "The Inetrnet Made Simple" (which is right infront of me) which had a chapter on creating a webpage with HTML. That book got me into programming because as I started to be able to make websites in HTML I wanted to know JavaScrrpt and found that I could pick it all up quickly. Then I saw a TV show which had a kid on it who had made his own game and I though "that would be cool" so I used to go into waterstones and look for books on making games (thinking it was REALLY simple) until a mate of mine said that he used Blitz. So here I am.

(I also used to 'design' games when I was younger, designed might be too strong a word to use as they were drawings of characters and what thir skills/items were)

Hey man I did this thread a while back and it got to over 200 replies, think it's been deleted ("archived") now.

Age 30. Spec 48K when 8, started programming it. Also programmed BBC and Acorn. Then got C64, programmed it and learnr assembly. Got Amiga500, used Assembly. Got 1200, used Blitz Basic 2 and Assembly. At 19 built own PC, DX4 100 to play Doom, didn't program it for a couple of years then learnt C++ for DOS, meanwhile (when 21) got a job as Senior Developer for a business software firm, been coding in Delphi for 9 years for them (became Manager and then Consultant). Nov last year bought Blitz Plus and have made 4 demo games, 1 demo, 1 app (Game Base Collector) and 1 commercial game.

[edot] Hey, I missed off consoles, Megadrive, PS1, PS2, Gamecube.

I'm 28 now.

Started with a Vic-20 at age 7.

First console was an Atari 2600.

Progressed through to a C-64 (new style), Sega Master System, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200, Amiga 600 (don't ask) a Cyrix 150 with 32MB and S3 Virge, Pentium 200 (later with a Voodoo 1), AMD K6-2 350 (later with an Nvidia TNT 32MB), Athlon 1200 (variously 256MB, 384MB and 512MB) with GeForce 3 ti 500 (woo!), AthlonXP 1900 (later with a GeForce 5900XT) and lastly my current system (see sig).

I started to learn assembly on the C64 but I never had a disk drive for it (nor an assembler!) and by the time I thought to ask for one for Christmas/Birthday the Amiga had caught my attention.

I pottered around on the A500 for a while, not doing anything special until I saved up and bought AMOS BASIC. AMOS Pro then came along, which I thought was the best thing since sliced bread. I ordered every single manual from Motorola concerning 68000 through to 68060, 68882 (FPU) and the MMU. Motorola would send these to you completely for free (no p&p even), but you had to look on their website for the catalogue codes. By that time my A1200 was really flying. I'd upgraded it with a 50MHz 68030, 50MHz 68882, 16MB of RAM (woot!) and a HD (first was 80MB, final was 1.6GB).

I learned assembly on the Amiga and bought DevPac assembler, which is still one of the best development environments I've ever used. I also learned C (thanks to SAS/C) but I didn't persue it because it was more complex than assembly (in my mind) and compilation was slow and resultant executables too large.

By the time I was starting to get good with 680x0 assembly, the Amiga was dying. PC's had just started to accelerate away from Amigas in terms of performance and capabilities. Once I'd built my first PC, I don't recall ever using my Amiga again. What I didn't do was learn to code on the PC. I tried to, I bought Visual C++ 6.0 and everything but I found the initial learning curve far too steep and anyway I was far more interested in going out and going to hard-house clubs and raves.

About 10 years pass by and my Cyrix 150 is now a distant memory. My coding skills have been almost forgotten and the realisation dawns that my old brain now has a much harder time learning stuff, but I dust off my copy of Blitz 3D and, well, here I am :)

35

First own computer Vic-20

35 now. Got Vic20 at 12 years, then C64 programmed 6502ASM. Stopped any involvement with computers at 15 due to girls and beer. Purchased first PC when I was about 30, started programming again 24 months ago. Started Indiepath and Launched first title about 12 months ago.

30.

Vic20 : C64 : Amiga 500 : Atari ST 520 : Amiga 1200 : Amiga 4000 (yeah baby!) : Various PC's.

Started programming in Microsoft basic for the C64, but quickly realized assembly was where all the cool kids where at. Programming mostly in assembly through to the early 1990's when this crazy guy named Peter Thor introduced me to BlitzBasic2. Switched to C when the Amiga went PowerPC and I got my first PC. Stopped programming for 3 years.

BlitzBasic arrived for the PC, started programming again - switched to Java for uni courses for a while - now switched to programming in BlitzMAX, which in my experience is the BEST LANGUAGE EVER (except maybe python)!

Really, how did you manage that then?

33

Started with an Oric Atmos ... moved onto Acorn Electron, BBCB , Spectrum48, Atari St , Amiga500 / 600 / 1200. Did a BSC in Computer Science at Glasgow University back in 1990's ( Macs ). I've written games on all of them at one time or another. Been a Blitz user since Blitz came out on the miggy and haven't looked back since discovering Blitz3d for the PC around 3 years ago.

Stevie.

Microsoft/Altair BASIC were not on the C64, so you're likely thinking of something else -- perhaps Commodore BASIC -- or you're just insane.

Never mind how old, certainly over 21; just call me gramps and be done with it. ;O)

Started with a UK 101 I think it was. This was before there were CBM Pets in any great numbers really. Used to code with dip switches as keyboards were a bit too pricey, we had a printer sometimes when we could borrow it. Tape storage, some paper some cassette. I dunno, the detail of it is all a bit blurry looking back on it. Hard to feel connected to it now, almost like it happend to some one else! <a most odd feeling that>

VP: I had an 80Mb HD for my 1200 too and Devpac 2 is was great. If it crashed I could reset and be back in the IDE in 2 secs.

I have programmed moreorless nonstop for 22 years but there was a patch when I first got a PC where I didn't make any games, just played DOOM and other cool games, I'm sure some of you understand why!

18

started with a amstrad cpc (err somthing like that), it came with a ring bound book with code examples in it - which i basicaly copied & pasted but it was the spark in my brain about programming. ...Foggy area of brain - anyting could of happened... .

My brother came to visit from America bringing with him a vast knowledge of programming. It was about this time we got our first PC with win 3.11 with which my brother programed qBasic on. I used to look at his code and ask "whats that do?", "what is PRINT?", "what happenes if I change this?".

Well my brother when back some years later and I decided that I would actually sit down and program. The first thing I made was a simple quiz which i basically learnt everything i know about programming from, it taught me iteration, subs & functions, vars, var scope, commenting & and other little such things.

We then got better PC and Windows 95 & VB. VB taught me alot about drawing pixels and user inteface creation, it also taught me how to keep code clean. Some years later i got a ps2 and wanteed to try and code that. I got the programming language it uses working on my pc but i could never really be bothered with that so i went back to vb. Tried making and rpg with it and got so far (had a simple editor and menu screen) but school got in the way.

I really got into programming when I took computing at school of course I already knew much of what was being said and the examers dont even take into account how efficant your code is so i got avrage grade for that (AS) and decided i didnt want todo that anymore so i left school (after i finshed the other course i was doing).

While i was taking computing i got hold of c++ and Blitz3D. got c++ because you cant call your self a programer with out knowing a bit about it. Anyway, the first thing i recall making with blitz3d was a 3d space game tho it tunred out to be more like a screen saver - so i went back and made some simple 2d games, clones (bomberman and such like). Know i have blitzmax and have created 3 things which you can be by looking at my sig.

I'm 39, and not looking forward to 40 one bit (that's old! <g>).

My first computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer in 1981, running at just under 1 MHz with 16K of memory and cassette tape storage. I loved that machine (fortunately emulators exist, so I can revisit whenever desired).

Earlier that year, I did work-study for high school on an old mainframe with reel-to-reel tapes at a Veterans Administration hospital. My first program was the familiar "Guess the number 1-100" in its BASIC.

Actually, Mikkel is NOT wrong with stating he programmed in Microsoft basic on the C64... Seeing as the core language built into them WAS microsoft basic.

46

Began programming 1976 on paper cards at school.

IPete2.

It was built into the machine.

Your ignorance is duly noted.

35 yrs old, first computer was this beast:



spent MANY a night pounding in ridiculous amounts of code from the back of some magazine... can't remember the name of it.

Extended Basic for the win! :)

after a long stint with a ton of consoles (remember colecovision?) i finally landed a 386 SX/33 around 1994-ish. used to hang out in BBSs and download shareware games.

I used to hang around on BBS's (even ran one, for a while) but I downloaded pirated games and called Sweden, Norway, Germany and Finland using a dodgy 0800 (free) number until I got a call from BT.

34, started in 1983.

Acorn Electron (BBC BASIC, 6502 assembler), Atari ST (GFA BASIC, 68000 assembler), then PC (BlitzBasic, Blitz3D and now BlitzMax).

IPete2 wrote:
That makes me feel a little better. ;)


markd wrote:
Ahh, then you share the love... :)

My CoCo was the older, metallic-gray-cased version, but after a few years I bought one of those white cases and new-style keyboards. I'd worn the gray paint off of the case where my palms rested from typing so much (including long program listings out of Rainbow magazine).

age: dead, buried, and forgotten...

year
started: loooong before most of you were hatched... when adventure was measured by different yardstcik than the speed of your cpu, or the size of your graphics card's memory...


hey MarkD... i remember that ole Trash-80 (as we affectionately called it)... close friend of mine had the whole setup, the BIG disk drives, not the 5 1/4 inch floppies, but i think his were bigger... TRS-DOS... aaahhhh those were the days...

thx for posting the pic markD... and thx for the memories...


i wound up with a TRS-80 Color Computer eventually... but not until i had cut my teeth with the TI-99/4A, the Vic-20, Commodore-64, the lil Timex Sinclair, an Amiga, and a PC Junior... that's when the fun days ended...

that PC Junior was the beginning of the end of home computing as we knew it... oh yes it was...

for those of you, unfortunate to have missed those magical times... well, the best you might do is search the web (ha... the web) for some of the names that i've thrown up above... take a minute or two to read through some of the stories from back then...

if you can find any of em, thumb through some old issues of COMPUTE! and MICROPENDIUM, and various other computer rags from the time, that don't immediately come to mind...

sure there was DOOM... and the (original) Macintosh... and they made you feel young again... but they too soon succumbed to the ubiquitous age of the faceless giant of mass marketing and uniformity...

in short... don't ever ask a question like this again... it embarrasses us dinosaurs that are still lingering around... it makes us angry at you for your impudence, and at the same time both envious of you for your youth, and sorry for you that you never got to see what it was all about when the age of magic and wonder was alive... and you could market a lil program in a plastic sandwich baggie, with lil more than a 8 1/2 by 11 inch page folded in half for the manual, and a cassette tape as the delivery media...

let me stop now, before i turn this into a book... i tend to wander off a bit now and then... you know how us old people are...


btw... although MS did write the BASIC in the C64, wasn't it called Commodore BASIC... or something similar...

--Mike

CBM BASIC V2 is the version on the C64 and it was indeed written by Microsoft, as was Amiga BASIC.

29 in a couple of weeks, first family PC was an 4 Mhz XT with a Monochrome CGA screen which I programmed in GW-BASIC (came with the PC along with a nice manual that was very well read), made a few simple ASCII character games back in 1988.

19

ZX-Sinclair at the age of 4... These were the days. Got into PCs in 91 - Aracade Vollyball, then later Dangerous Dave and the Wolfenstein got me... And then sure there were adventure games - I'm still hooked and ignoring consoles.

I still have documentary evidence of the beginning. :)

Note the date - I was 15 at the time. Ahhh, the day that changed my life, somewhat. :P

Big10p: calculating age ... beep beeep bing = 37

39, started with a TRS Model 1 (never owned one, but I knew the local radio shack owner). That was the late seventies sometime.

First machine I owned was a VIC-20

Wrong. :) Clue: it was my birthday just over a week ago. :/

36, started in 1982/1983 with a C64 and a tape deck. Started with Basic but move onto assembly real fast as that was way cooler. Did assembly coding on the Amiga as well later on. Got my first PC in 1990. Didn't code much of anything for a very long time (5-6 years or so). Only got serious about coding when I found BlitzPlus and Blitz3D. Now I really don't use anything else but BlitzMax which I think is rather good.

35,started programming on the ZX81, then onto the spectrum,sinclair QL and then Amiga gefore moving onto the 286 PC.

@big10p £128 was a lot of money in 83, I had forgotten how expensive the spectrum was in the early days.

Sure was. My Nan bought it for me as a classic 'birthday and Christmas' present. Worth every penny, though. :)

I'm 45 and have been computing since the 70's - I was a lab assistant for IBM in 1977 whilst they were developing the IBM 3033 processor. I was sacked by IBM in 1979 for being considered untrustworthy, a compulsive liar and potentially insane.

Still, their loss.

31 Years old... Started at the age of 8...

ZX81
Spectrum - Hey Hey 16K!
Spectrum 128
Memotec MTX 512
Atari ST
Amiga 500
Amiga 1200
PC

@ Puki

"considered untrustworthy, a compulsive liar and potentially insane."

These days they'd have put you in charge of their accounts, and they'd be glad of such talent! ;O) What fools! ;O)

Born 1988, that makes me about 17 years old.
I started using computers when I was 8-10 years old or so.

I started at 10 in '88 in Spectrum Sinclair Basic but I didnt have a clue what I was doing so I gave up. Then discovered blitz

Nice! Yeah, 16, started with an old HP comp, can't remeber what kind, but I was like 6. I remeber it had a Pentium, that's it, just a Pentium (like a 75) with Win 3.1x My first days in programing were of the likes of HTML and JavaScripting. I soon moved on to C/C+, Assembler, a little Basic, and finaly on to Blitz where I still do my C&Assembler (in production of my own OS). My first actualy dsecent comp was the one I built myself about 3 years ago. Not to bad today after all the upgrades.

47- Been in IT since before it was called IT sooooo around the mid 70's then when I left Skool.

Ran successful business alongside Lecturing at Uni/college.

Retired aged 40, now program for fun along with creating graphics and projects for the wee village wot I live in.

oh.. and I am approx 80-90% disabled (most of the time, it depends on my meds).. and still usful as a comode and drug tester for the National Health Service :)

oooh and Santa brought me an Xbox to hack :)

Cheers
Garion

26 - Addicted to computers since Grade 1, 85 when my primary school started experimenting with C64s and Amstrad CPCs. Got my first computer in 90 (Amiga) and been supergeek ever since.

Started in 1972
and still writing code professionally.

It was about 1968. I was 4. My Dad worked at NASA here in Houston and one day he took me to work. Showed me this magic box that typed by itself after you pressed a phone into its 90 baud modem cups!!!

It was a Honeywell Dumbterm hooked up to the NASA mainframe in building 8. He showed me Star Trek and let me play Wumpus. I poked around a bit. He showed me how to list code and I got him to change some things in Wumpus.

Later his friend (the one that married Mom after he died) printed out a Picture of Spock on the IBM line printer. It was cool!!!

I also got sat on by an astronaut but that was a different building.

Started a long time ago on the C64. Didn't understand what I was doing so just played games instead. Avoided computers for a while then eventually got my first PC when I was 15. I think it was a 60mhz Pentium with 16mb ram, might have been 8mb ram, and an 800mb harddrive. Didn't code anything major on the PC but did dabble a little with C which was way over my head then gave up and just used the PC for homework. I discovered PC Blitz about 4 years ago but didn't actually start coding fulltime or even a little bit until recently.

That's about it. :)

30 - started at age 11

spectrum 128+
Amiga 600
Amiga 1200
PC...hmmm, crap..but what can you do.

24
I started to learn Basic in 1988-ish, on a Sharp MZ-700.

I've been programming games for 27 years and I still havn't improved.

I was 3 when I wrote my first game from a listing, about 6 or 7 when I released my first game, and roughly 14 when I had my first commercial release.

I like to think that around the world most people in their mid-20's or older and into computer games have probably played a game I was involved in at some time or other. It's almost certainly not true but my ego likes the idea.

22 in March. Started on the BBC Micro when i was quite young. I used to say 4 but I recon i didn't do anything useful till i was 6, which was Den Bros I and II, a non scrolling, and then a left-scrolling platformer in which my sister (who was 4) "designed" the enemies. She understood how to fill in an 8x8 grid to make the shape of a visible object. Also used two cables to modify my BBC to enable voice recording and playback :D

Stuck with my BBC until college when i was...16 or 17... when the only working BBC of the four in my house was thrown away because i (okay, life story ends here.)

Got a PC at 18 and then kept updating it till just last year when i figured i need to get a whole new system. Again.

Published games? None, sadly, but I did make Den bros III in Qbasic along with Total Sonic. Helped write a 5-a-side footy game last year but something happened between "posting and delivery" (email and receipt?)- either way, i'm not too sure what happened. Then there was the Racer- and more recently a CAD application- mostly behind the scenes stuff. And thats about it :)

Learned to program by taking apart loading screen code on BBC Micro games (specifically the Mastertronic one that drew out their logo properly, rather than just loading a screendump).

I guess I was 6-8 when I started. Played with assembler after a while, got bored, got an Acorn A3010 in 199...2? I think. Played about with fast new BASIC and 256 colours. Played with some graphics stuff.

1997, parents got a PC (Cyrix 133), Win95, of course. Got heavily into PC games after years of starvation on the Acorn. Had played Doom quite a bit on a friend's PC, but now I got to play with Duke Nukem 3D, Privateer 2, C&C.

1998, got Lightwave 3d 5.5. Made my first tentative steps in 3d graphics, inspired by C&C and Babylon 5.

1998, bought my own system. PII400, Voodoo 3 2000 graphics card, 128mb RAM. Alien vs Predator. Oh yes.

1999 Released my first CGI movie, 4 mins 50 secs long. It's embarrassing today, but I at the time it stood up very well to what the rest of the community was producing.

2001 Found DarkBASIC, realised I could again write BASIC games, cheered. Found it worked in 3d, cheered again. Played with the language for a year, and found it horribly uwieldy, assumed I was a bad programmer.

2003 Found Blitz3d, realised DB was holding me back, have been a productive coder ever since.

2004 Learned PHP. Was surprised to find it's actually fun. Went on to learn a bit of JavaScript.

2005 Could finally afford a legit copy of LW. Promised myself I would buy it as soon as I could afford it. Working on a demo reel and a visualisation project for learning through a theatrical medium. Desperately need more processor cores for faster rendering. There's two of us on the project, and we worked out that between us we will on average take 52 days of computer rendering time alone.

Published software? Shortly the map editor for a fairly well-known browser-based game will be released with my name on it! Made a few freebie cause-and-effect games for special needs schools.

Currently, I'm leaning a little towards CG in my spare time, and would prefer a job in that area. I certainly think I'm a better artist than programmer.

I'm 30, and first really started getting into computers back in '88, age 13. (Occasionally used the Commodore 64 and MSX in elementary school before that)

At the time I had a long-term loaner computer (a Wang laptop -- 20 pounds, with a small B/W 2-color non-backlit LCD screen, 10MB HD, no floppy drive, and built-in thermal printer. Amazing system -- laptops were few and far between back then. I can't seem to find a picture of it online anymore, unfortunately.)

Anyway, I learned to program in GW-BASIC on that thing. In 1990, when I was 15, I bought my first computer of my own: An Amiga 2000.

After a little dinking around with the thouroughly unimpressive Amiga Basic, I took a short look at GFA Basic (didn't really get into that), before switching to AMOS. Got the whole set (compiler, 3D, etc.) but never
really did much with the 3D version.

In 1992 I bought an Amiga 1200 shortly after they hit the market, and also upgraded to AMOS Professional when it came out.

With Commodore circling the drain for a long time, I made the jump to the PC in '94 or so, and got a 486DX2/66. It was later followed the AMD 486DX4/120, Intel Pentium 133, Pentium II 400, Athlon 1200 and the current Athlon 2800+

Over the years I've used a ton of different programming languages, mostly BASIC flavors but also some C, Pascal, and simple inline ASM. BlitzBASIC is my favorite by far so far -- followed by AMOS Professional.

27
Got interested in computers and programming around -86. The computer was Olivetti L1 M20. After getting Commodore 64 for christmas a few years later, I lost my intrest in coding (those damn addictive games). Then there was the usual route through Amiga 500 to PC-world.

Around 7 years ago I started coding again. I also got myself a coding job. Not games though... corporate mainframes, cobol, DB2 and stuff. Yes, I'm crazy enough to code at work AND at freetime.

I'm pretty new to BB now, but I've loved it so far.

21

Before 1996 - Some weird large grey Atari box.

1996 - 486?...

I didn't start programming until 1996, even then it was only Microsoft Visual Basic.