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Comment by jw1224 | Hacker News Reader

Psion 3c was what got me into programming!

My grandfather gave me his old one when I was a kid. To an 11-year-old, a spreadsheet, world clock, and address book gets old pretty fast :)

But the in-built OPL [1] language provided unlimited possibilities. You can see the icon for it in one of the screenshots.

I remember printing off a copy of the 300-page language manual I found online (breaking dad’s printer in the process). Now 20 years later and I have Psion/OPL to thank for my career.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Programming_Language

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I started with OPL on a Pison Series 3 (“no bloody A, B, C, or D!”) with 128 kbytes of storage — unlimited potential but limited resources… my first project was to code up something that looked like John Connor’s ATM-cracking program from Terminator 2.

For those that don't get the reference: https://youtu.be/qTOP1BezOB8

It is green.

No so long ago, around 2012 :), I was still using my Psion 3c + a short OPL program, to trigger my hacked time lapse camera over serial line. It worked quite reliably for years. https://forums.4fips.com/viewtopic.php?t=717

That’s neat!

Funnily enough, my next foray into coding (after OPL) would be scripting timelapses on my Canon PowerShot with CHDK [1] — wish I’d thought of doing it with a Psion though.

[1] https://chdk.fandom.com/wiki/CHDK

Exactly the same here. Stole my fathers Psion 3a and wrote a lottery number picker in OPL. IIRC, it even had pretty great syntax to easily draw the various default OS UI elements.

The ability to write the application and then run it on the same mobile device was such a rewarding feedback loop as a kid. There were some pretty good books on OPL in the 90s too.

The standard of the third party gaming ecosystem for the OS (EPOC) was shockingly good for the time as well really, there was an amazing golf game, also written in OPL. That Steve Litchfield name I remember a lot from the era, he was extremely active developing OPL software:

> https://stevelitchfield.com/fairway.htm

This little comment thread made me smile! Psion 3 (no letter) was my first PDA when I was about 12 and then I upgraded to a Psion 3c. After graduating from BASIC on my father's Acorn A3000 and A5000 my first apps on my own computing device were OPL shareware. It's where I got my love of what would become open source for me. I also did work experience at the Psion Factory when I was 15 because I grew up nearby (yes, they were actually manufactured in Greenford in West London, in a warehouse behind the B&Q on the A40).

I visited there a few times to get my touch-key strip repaired. It was a 5min cycle ride from where I lived when I first moved to London.

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