Comment by gtk40 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gtk40 | Hacker News Reader

I'm a younger millennial (born in early 90s) who got his start with BASIC. The first programming I did was on Q-BASIC on our aging desktop machine (386 with Windows 3.1) that we didn't use for much, especially with very limited Internet use.

When I took programming in high school, we started with TI-BASIC on TI-83 calculators for about a month, as my programming teacher felt like this best replicated his experience learning programming on a TRS-80. I tend to agree, and this is a great use of BASIC. It's the default programming interface on a widely used computer to this day.

We then moved to VB6 for our "serious" programming, although we also did JavaScript and Java.

My first programming professionally was done in an office setting at a temp job using VBA to help with some Excel work. And then my first job as a software engineer, even though I wasn't writing it, did have some Visual Basic.NET floating around (most of my work was in C#).

I started to learn programming, by writing programs in TI-BASIC on the TI-84 (compatible with the 83) calculator. I just got it, because it was required to have a graphic calculator for math class.

It was just enough of a push. Small programs and games were fine and I actually got really used to the keyboard (I can still type on it pretty quickly these days). For longer programs I def. remember wanting to program with more monitor real estate and not having to rely on GOTOs. That's how I started to learn Python, which I still use daily.

Same. My TI-BASIC magnum opus was 527 lines of spaghetti code, implementing dozens of nested menus for solving any trigonometry problem I was assigned. I honestly think that this is one of the best ways to introduce programming to a kid: "Hey, that math homework looks pretty tedious...wouldn't it be nice if your calculator could do all the work for you?"

My story is similar to the OP's. Started with TI-BASIC, and downgraded to Java for a programming class. :)

It turns out, you can actually write programs in TI-BASIC on a computer, and sync the file to the calculator with the usb connector.

I used to charge kids in my class for copies of my games (Snake, and a Zork-esque text adventure). a lot of early business lessons there, in retrospect.

My first language was Basic (first on an HP-2000 timesharing system and then on the Apple II), but my second language was 6502 assembly, something for which I will be forever grateful - with the groundwork laid by assembly, C was a wonderful step up, handling all the tedious parts of writing assembly while allowing nearly all the same precision and control - reading the original K&R book was a transcendent experience. After those, other languages were easy.

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