I was 11 and it was 1969. I sat at home writing out BASIC code ready to transcribe it on to the teletype machine in my school linked to a mainframe about 10 miles away.
It was my all-singing all-dancing moon-lander game. It didn't work. Of course it didn't. And it was the first time I hit the wall in coding trying to do something far beyond my abilities. Definitely not the last :-)
But I never stopped. And here I am, 50 years later, writing code for a living. (Website back-end stuff - don't ask me to design anything :-) )
Punched cards, punched tape, coding by marking formatted cards - I've done it all :-)
I've even had to bootstrap a clean PDP mini by writing and then keying-in the code to make the tape-reader work - using physical switches on the main panel.
I was 11 and it was 1969. I sat at home writing out BASIC code ready to transcribe it on to the teletype machine in my school linked to a mainframe about 10 miles away.
It was my all-singing all-dancing moon-lander game. It didn't work. Of course it didn't. And it was the first time I hit the wall in coding trying to do something far beyond my abilities. Definitely not the last :-)
But I never stopped. And here I am, 50 years later, writing code for a living. (Website back-end stuff - don't ask me to design anything :-) )
Kids today have it easy! I'm glad I never had to use punch cards.
Punched cards, punched tape, coding by marking formatted cards - I've done it all :-)
I've even had to bootstrap a clean PDP mini by writing and then keying-in the code to make the tape-reader work - using physical switches on the main panel.
It's a humbling experience.
Have you seen this short film by Ellis Kropotchev?