Comment by jcmeyrignac | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jcmeyrignac | Hacker News Reader

I'll share my own experience, since I started computer programming in 1982 (on a 6502 based computer called Oric-1), then worked in the game industry for 18 years.

What I remember from these early times:

1) we had only one television at home, so typing programs required to have access to the TV. This is why I spend a lot of time analyzing programs BEFORE typing them, since I didn't have a lot of time to type them. This probably taught me a lot !

2) I always wanted to improve the programs I typed, so I spent a lot of time optimizing them. This also proved useful later ;-)

3) Some programs included mysterious hexadecimal characters. I tried to find some documentation about that. It was difficult, because the information was scarce, and there was no Internet. One day, I got an Aha!, and I discovered 6502 that day. This was useful, since I did write quite a lot of games in 6502, and it got me my first job in the game industry in 1985.

4) In France, there was a beautiful newspaper called Hebdogiciel. It contained programs for all kinds of computers. I tried to convert these programs to my computer, and this also gave me pointers to handle conversion between Basics. My first job was about converting Basic programs between various computers (Thomson TO7 <> Exelvision).

5) everything was so new and exciting ! Nowadays, I don't feel this kind of excitement. Everything is so easy to put in place. At the time, we only had 48 to 64 kilobytes of memory. Everything was a challenge. The computers were not designed to write games, but games were doable.

> 5) everything was so new and exciting ! Nowadays, I don't feel this kind of excitement. Everything is so easy to put in place.

I'm probably the same age as you (started in 1982 on a Philips P2000) and feel the same. What wrecks me every time is the thought how many new things we discovered and did in a timespan of just a few years back then (the lifespan of various home computer models). Today, 10 years pass and all we really get is somewhat faster CPUs, slightly bigger memory, better graphics. And it's not worth it to discover any specific tricks for any platform (like you could on home computers to get more colors / bigger screen etc.).

4 ) "In France, there was a beautiful newspaper called Hebdogiciel." <== je suis d'accord avec vous... quel magazine... j'ai beaucoup appris avec sans Internet(I agree with you, what a magazine, i learned a lot without internet)

5 ) I don't agree, i still find so much exitement today with what is going on around, sure we have so much more power, but there is still challenge today, i'll admit not the same, but still a lot of challenges.

The lack of access to documentation was hard, very true, but then it also meant reverse-engineering was the only way to proceed, and from a certain angle, that was a good thing.

This! Still have fond memories of reverse-engineering the screen-buffer encoding on my Amstrad CPC 464 by poking values directly into the buffer and watching what happened on the display (i.e. my TV). Somehow got hold of the Z80 datasheet for opcodes - but working out the relative jumps with pen an paper was a slow process. Upgraded to Amiga around the time when I realized that assemblers had to be a thing...

Yes, I was coding in hand-coded hex machine language for a couple of years before I had access to an assembler. These days, when and IDE drops into assembly and all my 20-something colleagues duck for cover, I rub my hands together in glee...

Actually, the documentation was amazing in retrospect. The Sinclair Spectrum user manual, which started with how to connect the computer to the TV, then proceeded to teach BASIC, had, in the appendix at the back, the most fascinating table. IIRC, it was a combined ASCII and Z80 opcode table, from which I pretty much taught myself assembler (and committed to memory the most common opcode hex encodings - and I still remember some of them to this day!).

I have always been bummed when listings had huge fields of data statements. In my mind, it was a little bit like cheating. Like using cake mix instead of ingredients.

I created a series[1] (pardon the plug) to make the software I had wanted to have when I started: simple, understandable, frugal, almost elegant.

Maybe, it will bring some nostalgia back!

[1] https://latenightsnack.io

I remember the Oric1. I used to hang out in the local computer shop, reading all the manuals.

Dragon, Oric, Commodore, Amstrad, Sinclair and BBC.

I already had a Sinclair ZX81.

The article really captured the exploration and discovery of that era.

On a more amusing note, my mate wrote a utility which we put on a floppy disc. We would go to shops and boot it, and it would copy all the roms. Good times.

I started with the successor of the Oric-1, the Oric Atmos. I had a similar experience as yours, except we had multiple TVs. Also, I don't know if my father bought it separately or if it came along, but on top of the standard manual in french (we're french), we also had a book which contained, among other things, the full 6502 instruction set (in english), which was very valuable. IIRC this is what it looked like: http://www.48katmos.freeuk.com/oricman.jpg

I have fond memories of this computer. I absolutely loved its keyboard.

Yes, I had a similar manual (I'm french too).

The problem is that the manual contained only the set of instructions, without any explanation. My Aha! was understanding how it worked.

I did write a couple of games on Oric/Atmos, but quickly changed to Atari ST (I had one of the first 520ST with its developer manual).

Even before Hebdogiciel (or maybe at about the same time?) there was "Jeux et Strategies", and it came also with BASIC listings for adventure games. Mind you, I don't recall ever getting one to work...

Ah, “Micro Adventurer” was awesome for the same things in English. Cross-platform BASIC code, I did a lot of work based of an article on more natural Adventure command grammars. So much fun!

I came across an old copy of this when I was in grade school. Early aughts. Finding those books may well have put me on the path to where I am now (embedded hardware eng)

> Mind you, I don't recall ever getting one to work...

There were many publications like that, and often they would contain broken code. I sometimes wondered if it was on purpose, but that was actually a great opportunity to go beyond just typing the code and run the program, having to understand the code, and debug it.

Similar experience, started coding around 1986 with a Timex 2068.

We had Input magazine, the Capital's newspaper computer section on Friday, Crash and from our neighbors Microhobby, which helped to improve my Spanish as well. :)

Hebdogiciel.... A fond!

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