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I miss Heathkit. I built a variable voltage and current power supply from a kit that I used for years.
1974: My first programming experience was on a PDP/11, punchtape storage, teletype, BASIC, 64K RAM, and mag tape drive that if it drew too much current would crash the entire computer.
1977: Second was a couple HP calculators, the first being an HP-25 - Wikipedia[^]
After highschool, I started programming on a Commodore PET. Onwards and upwards!
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My high school had a PDP/8 with two terminals but no tape drive, just the punch tape. I learned BASIC on it my senior year 1977/78. I had a PET, 64, and Amiga.
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Roland M Smith wrote: I had a PET, 64, and Amiga.
I somehow skipped the Amiga, going from PET and C64/ Vic20 to a dual floppy IBM PC.
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I miss Heathkit too. Build a lot of equipment for my HAM father.
First programming experience was Fortran on an IBM 1440 in High school. I miss the punch card confetti we threw at each other!
Then it was off to the Air Force and COBOL, where I learned BASIC on a friends Apple IIe, Star Trek anyone? We programed the game to go back in time if you went fast enough close to a star! Yes, we were geeks!
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It was the day after I got my C64 (Hanukkah 1984)... I just finished the book came with it without sleeping...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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I was going to mention I'm of the C64 generation, but it seems like you and I have started on the same thing. Only, on Xmas 1984, I was 12. I guess it's not a generation thing.
I can't make the same claim about the book however. Being a 12-year old French boy, it took me a lot longer to go through it.
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I was 12 at 1984 just like you...
My book was in Hungarian (I wasn't speaking about the books originally come with the C64 - they were gone when I got the machine, but about a book my father got with the machine)...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: I was 12 at 1984 just like you...
Sorry Kornfeld, I could've sworn I had read a message from yourself saying you were much older than that. Somehow I've associated that with your name... 
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It was Christmas of '82 or '83 (can't remember) and my parents bought my brothers and I a TI-99/4a. My brothers were only interested in the games, but I quickly discovered that it could do more. I learned enough BASIC to write small programs to solve my HS algebra and geometry homework.
A few years later I went to uni as a CS major but quit when I got kicked out of the lab for refusing to yield a terminal to an upperclassman. 10 years later, tired of factory work, I went back and finished. I got my first programming job a year before I graduated and am still working here 20 years later. 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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The TI 99/4A was also my first computer. I taught myself BASIC and Extended BASIC. Then I moved on to Assembler. That got me hooked on programming. I even remember the interesting quirk of the graphics abilities on that computer. Each row was divided into blocks of 8 pixels which could have only 2 colors. I still have that computer somewhere in the basement.
Kelly Herald
Software Developer
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It was about the time that I got the Extended BASIC cartridge that the cassette modem went out so no more saving...funny, it would load from it, just not write to it.
I spent many a night playing the Scott Adams (not that guy) Adventure series games where the commands were 3 letter verb/noun combos like 'dri rum' or 'say yoh'. Fun times! 
I still have mine in the original box...why I'm not even sure.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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That reminds me of when we would get on the teletype to MIT over the ARPANET (pre-internet) and play ZORK! I think I still have some of the output! It was written in MUDDLE, a friend analyzed it and found some cheat like "Send for mail" which would get you a brochure in the mailbox and one point!
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During the summer of 1971, between grades 9 and 10, I got access to the Board of Education's IBM mainframe and wrote some FORTRAN programs on punch cards.
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Keying in instructions on the front panel of a LEO/III (see below) in 1966, and then moving to creating self loading programs on paper tape. Worked on various different systems and languages in the intervening years.
Leo Computers Society. Leo 3 photos[^]. I worked on III/6 (i.e the sixth system off the factory), the first four photos on the second row.
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Depends. First program was written for the HP-67 on magnetic strip to run analysis of gas chromatography data.
Second was PDP-11 assembly to analyse data from Inductively Coupled Argon Plasma Spectrophotomer for elemental analysis
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, navigate a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects! - Lazarus Long
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1964. First year science at Monash Uni. Punch FORTRAN II cards on an IBM 026, submit to the CDC 3200.
The next year we did all sorts of devious things, based on fixed load locations and lack of array bounds checking.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Early 1983. First year of engineering. FORTRAN on a Multics system. Judging from those first attempts I should not be doing it now. But I am!
That was the first year that they removed the punch card machines with terminals. Dodged that bullet!
I, for one, like Roman Numerals.
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Do those turtle things that run around the floor count?
If not, then I think 2000. Some Turbo C++ thing in which I wrote the biggest switch statement of my life... you enter an album track number, and it prints out the lyrics for that song. The album was Slipknot (self-entitled).
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1983, high school, PDP-11, RSTS-E, BASIC-Plus. VT100 and similar termini, no freaking punch cards.
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1974-5 (or thereabout) on the mainframe of the Weizmann Institute. Punched cards, batch processing, FORTRAN IV, 1-2 hours between submitting the card deck and receiving the output.
Need I say more?
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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1984 I took my first programming class, BASIC. I absolutely hated it, the immediate spaghettification of any 'code' I wrote was very off putting, unreadable and near impossible to debug. I mostly blame the instructor for condoning poor coding practices. My next class was FORTRAN 77, and the opposite happened, I loved it. Since I was in the EE program, I didn't concentrate on programming in school. Only once I started working did I need to know assembler, c, c++.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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My first experience was with time-shared BASIC on an HP3000 in the mid-1970s. I remember the instructor being blown away that I made a cypher encoder/decoder program.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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What's with all the "pissing contests" of late? Everyone here has been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt. 
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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Well, for one thing, there's no wrong answer...
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Commodore 16, something like 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10
Then bits of BBC Basic at School....
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