Cool, another Liberty BASIC practitioner! What do you code in these days?
When I was in elementary school, I learned Scratch using a book from the library. It was nice to learn the fundamentals, but I would consider Python my first real programming language. (Real meaning something with syntax.)
Today, I hate Python and only use Rust and JavaScript/TypeScript.
my first programming language was python because i was looking for a language to learn and a lot of people suggested it. im now trying to learn javascript because i want to learn some webdev stuff.
2 Likes
My first language was LOGO too way back in the 3rd grade. We didn’t even realize we were programming, we were just drawing pictures. I think I used BASIC at some point in middle school and then either C++ or Java later on.
3 Likes
technically i started learning with block code back in middle school-- and i think that was in scratch! but my first actual written code was in javascript. i use c & c++ more nowadays, just since the majority of coding i’ve been doing lately has been for uni. i honestly like the way c is written, the only issue i have is that i HATE writing class constructors.
1 Like
My first contact with a programming language was in high school with a language called PSeInt, although I don’t really count it since it’s just a basic pseudocode language. My first real language was C++, then Java in university. Later, I discovered Python and it became my favorite due to its aesthetics and simplicity. Currently, I only write TypeScript and Ruby since I work as a web developer, but I’m really eager to go back to lower-level languages like Rust.
TI-Basic on the TI-83+/84+ series of calculators, as well as Game Maker Language – both for writing games. I don’t use either one nowadays, since I gave my TI-84+SE out to someone else and I moved away from Game Maker pretty quickly.
BASIC on the Amstrad CPC 6128. Doing amazing things like changing the colour of the border of the screen and getting the Amstrad to ask me ‘Wargames’ style questions😅
I have such a soft spot for that machine. I’m sure I won’t ever be able to remember every disc we had for it, but I’d like to try to recreate the experience.
1 Like
Dang core memory unlocked. I guess mine would also be TI-Basic. Created scripts that would aid in my homework so I didn’t have to type everything in manually.
1 Like
My calculator has TI-Basic too, but also Python, my first real programming language. (Even though I learned it almost a decade earlier.)
When the calculators were new, we used to “trade” games over USB. There are even 3D games!
My first language I typed into a ZX Spectrum was BASIC but the first language I actually learned was Pascal.
I feel like the oldest person on the internet!
1 Like
One of ‘em, anyway. I learned C on a SPARCstation at college in 1996.
1 Like
Let me grab my cane and water bottle. We can go for a slow walk in the park, sit on a bench and reminisce about the old days.
1 Like
My first language must have been BASIC-related, probably BASIC VB.NET. I remember having one of those physical programming tutorial books that let you create a Windows forms application through a combination of drag-and-dropping all kinds of elements onto a canvas and writing code for the interactions with those elements.
my first CS professor in school had us use Java, but all the tests were with pen and paper, which was an absolutely useless way to learn programming.
He would deduct points if our handwritten code didn’t include “code comments” at the top listing out the author and the date it was authored (even though we put our names at the top of the test sheet).
Absolute clown behavior. Then I graduated and got a real job and realized how ridiculous that was.
2 Likes
BASIC, initially written on paper until I had regular access to a computer.
I was a very sick child and computers were few and far between in the early 1980s in rural England but my school decided to let me sit in the library instead of running around outside, and eventually put a computer in a small room next to the library.
At the time in the UK we had a wide variety of home computers, each with their own variant of BASIC on boot. A children’s book publisher, Usborne started producing books with simple games to type in and I started adapting these to run on computers that the books didn’t consider including my beloved Amstrad CPC.
Eventually I progressed to writing Z80 Assembler, and by the early 1990s I was dabbling with Visual BASIC at school while still writing things on my trusty CPC at home.
This was how I wrote my initial webpages back in 1993:
- Dial my modem into another computer which had internet access.
- Write all the HTML on a single line because line breaks are different on different computers.
- Look at it using text mode browsers like the line mode browser, w3m, lynx, etc.
Eventually typing it all live was a little frustrating so I saved up enough money to get a second disk drive for my computer so I could use standard IBM PC floppy disks (the Amstrad CPC used a less common 3 inch disk format) which made it a little easier to transfer text between computers.
I continued doing things like this until 1996 when I eventually was getting ready to leave high school and wanted to start using Linux at home, by which point I had semi-regular access to computers running RISC OS and NeXTSTEP and daily access to a Windows PC and importantly a graphical web browser where I could finally see how my pages looked.
After high school I got a job maintaining various programs using BASIC (including Visual BASIC for both Windows and DOS) and did that for a few years until I switched to exclusively doing web stuff in the early 2000s.
2 Likes
Man, Usborne books were the BEST! I loved those growing up, and they’ve actually since put all of their computer books online for free:
I’ll bet they have some of the ones you used!
I do not envy those of you who had to write programs down on paper first. I gleefully missed that era myself, and I’ll bet the relief when you no longer had to was palpable!
3 Likes
Scratch would be my first language, followed by CSS if you want to argue it to be a programming language. I do plan on learning Python soonish, though I haven’t gotten started yet with that lol
2 Likes
My introduction to coding was HTML, though I know it’s not technically a programming language. That was in late 2022, so I’m still fairly newish at this stuff.
I had multiple false starts with Javascript, and still can’t get my head around it.
Currently stumbling through learning Lua on Pico-8, and unlike with Javascript, I’m slowly making progress with it. So I guess my actual first programming language is Lua… if I don’t end up hitting an impenetrable wall.
1 Like
Who told you that? It might not be a Turing complete language, or an imperative programming language, but it is a declarative programming language.
Anybody who tells you otherwise knows even less than I do about computer science, and I didn’t even finish my degree.
And Lua’s a sweet little language, even though I’ve never had a good reason to use it myself.
4 Likes