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With the recent brouhaha about vulnerabilities in many relatively recent processors, I got to thinking back to the time when I first started programming. Back then, things seemed so much simpler and much more straightforward.
To start off the new year, I thought it might be interesting to find out how people got their start in programming.
My first exposure to programming was by means of a Teletype over a dialup line using an acoustical coupler to a PDP-8 computer running TSS/8 and which had 24 KB of RAM. At the time, Star Trek ToS was on the air, and I thought this was the new, big thing. I was quickly disappointed by it not measuring up to anything like what I saw on TV, but I saw it had promise. Started with BASIC (and FOCAL). Later on was exposed to a PDP-11 running RSTS/E and programmed in BASIC+ as well as some Pascal.
As for owning a computer, the first one I bought was an OSI[*] Challenger 4P with a whopping 4KB of RAM!
From those humble beginnings, I ate up everything I could lay my hands on and later worked for a wide variety of companies that ranged in size from major internationals to tiny startups. Even had a hand in a project for Formula 1!
So, my fellow Soylentils, how did you get started programming? Where has it taken you?
[*] One day when my girlfriend came over and saw the OSI logo on my computer her eyes got huge! You see, The Six Million Dollar Man was on television at that time, and she suddenly suspected I was connected to the "Office of Scientific Intelligence"!
(Score: 2) by Rich on Friday January 05 2018, @01:34AM
Calculator. 7 segment display, 256 programming steps. The first significant program I wrote on it that I can remember was a "one-armed-bandit" style game which used the Hours/Minute/Seconds display for the 3 wheels. Still wonder how I not only managed to write that, but get it into the 256 steps. ZX-80 (not 81) and Apple II+ followed. Got the calculator confiscated in school (for hacking on it during class), in the course of which it got lost. Many years later, I went on an eBay shopping spree in the course of which I re-bought one of them - and all the other cool calculators (the Casio x02P series and a few of the classic HPs) I lusted for back then, too. :)