Humble Beginnings
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The first program I can remember writing, was when I was working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array, near Socorro, New Mexico. My job there was that of an Array Operator, which meant that I had to work all hours of the day. Working the graveyard shift was hardest. My job required me to change set up the next astronomical observation into a very archaic type of computer called a MOD-COMP (I’m assuming that the VLA has updated them long ago). But the important thing was that the new observational run couldn’t be inputted until soon before the currently running observation was about to finish. It was very easy for me to fall asleep and potentially miss inputting the new instructions.
So, what I did was learn how to program in FORTRAN on a DEC-10 (it was the only language available to me at the time). I discovered that there was an alarm signal, that was a part of the equipment in the control room where I worked, and that I could access that alarm signal programmatically. So, what I did was I wrote a FORTRAN program to become an alarm clock. I could then take a snooze and be awakened 15 minutes before the next observational run was to take place, so I would have plenty of time to set it up.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
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Glad you liked it and some interesting programs.
Baseball was something I enjoyed and a friend and I wrote a program that automated a baseball game we had on the Apple II. We used it to simulate a whole season one time, though about 5 or 6 weeks into it, the weather turned and I was suddenly more interested in the "real thing".
We also wrote an "OS" in Apple Basic that was single tasked, designed to play Dungeons and Dragons. Kind of a Zork type of interface. However it turned out to be less enjoyable than some pads of paper and dice with friends.
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My Blog: www.voiceofthedba.com -
My app is a little more recent, but still has a history. After i got into development 12 + years ago, i discovered i wanted a little more control of my computers startup sequence. I soon found multiple places where applications were loaded upon startup. Each time a new app was installed, it slowed down my startup time. So, i wrote a simple app with Delphi that kept a list of apps in my registry. Along with the app name and file source, it had a checkbox. So i could enable or disable apps. So, periodically, i would review the apps auto loaded to the computer, and move them to my little app.
Soon, this became useful as i moved from machine to machine. I could easily restore the apps i most used. When i wanted to boot clean, i simply shut down the app when it launched, and none of the apps would load. Leaving me with a simple boot sequence, when needed.
Now this doesnt seem like much. But I wrote this app, close to 10 years ago. I made a couple modifications in the first year. But since then, it has stayed the course. I have not had the need to modify it, and have long since lost the source code. So, as far as all the apps go that i have been involved in, it is the most long lasting of any of them.
Simple, useful, and transparent. Makes my day better.
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My best fun program was a game called Sword of Aragon, published by SSI, about twenty years ago. It sold fairly well. I think I made about $1 per hour.
Back in those days, you had to write your own low-level graphics (in assembler) and handle all the interaction. It was quite a learning experience in many ways.
So long, and thanks for all the fish,
Russell Shilling, MCDBA, MCSA 2K3, MCSE 2K3
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yes yes, I wrote a vendor catalog database in MBASIC!!!
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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While we're at it, can we have a show of hands on everyone who did a Mandelbrot set?
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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I used to make a lot of "mix tapes" as teen. I wrote a program for my Commodore 64 that let me put in the names of songs and their lengths, and kept a running total so that I could figure out what I could fit on one side of a 90 minute cassette. When I had the list finished it printed an insert card with the song titles that I could slip into the cassette case.
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The first program that had any usefulness I wrote was in basic on a pdp 11/45 at Cal state Chico in 1974/5, it was a 3d version of Trek the old 2d game. My version died for having too many bugs but the guy that re-wrote it did a great job. The next thing I tackled for fun and profit was a game written in assembler on a 6809 system running OS9, it was basically a database engine and processing engine for a play by mail game that I ran with a partner. It was called Web War II and it was based on another PBM game called StarWeb. Ahh the good old days, before e-mail and the internet when you could actually run a one turn every 2 weeks game.
Scott
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Wow look at all the old school Vic-20 and C-64 programmers out here ! Any of you guys n gals remember the old Compute! and Compute!'s Gazette mags? I spent many a long hour typing in the hexadecimal encoded Machine Language video games from the back each issue. After a couple of months of re-typing the same games in, dad finally spent the $$$ for a tape recorder
Oh the joys -
After a quick scan of posts I didn't see any Coleco Adam users out there (probably for good reason!) but now you have one...
I wrote a expense tracker program in BASIC for the Adam in 1984 when I was 23. My mom bought it for me. The PC XT was too expensive. I had the daisy wheel printer for my first resume. It had a cassette digital tape backup (I think this all cost $500). Later (as I recall) my mom bought the 5 1/4 inch floppy drive for about $200 (ouch!).
And yes, I wrote a mandelbrot set graphics program and set it to music (by laying the needle down on record as the program started) by the Vangelis album "Albedo 0.39" (my best geek moment).
All this lead to my first programming job, the Monday after Easter, 1986. I just had a 20th anniversary party to celebrate (thanks Mom!)
In hindsight, I shorted myself (as I bet many of you did too). I should have not discounted the simplicity of my expense program and got my butt in gear and wrote one to sell. When I think of all the quicken copies that have been sold since then and I was right there...
Arg
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I stumbled into programming almost by accident. I was a high school teacher with a Ph.D. in comparative literature, teaching Latin and English classes at the time. One Friday on a whim I borrowed one of the math department's Apple II machines to play with for the weekend. I took it home and managed to write a little program that drew a horse on the screen in lo-res graphics. I was only able to save the program to cassette tape because I hadn't bothered to borrow a disk drive, but I was hooked: after years of studying literature, I had found a magic world where words actually made things happen.
I took some courses, bought an Apple //e, and before long was teaching BASIC and Pascal. The math teachers were glad to get rid of the assignment, because they only wanted to use the machines for mathematics and really did not enjoy debugging student programs. I, on the other hand, loved it, and began writing example programs to help my students learn.
I wrote all sorts of programs, but I had the most fun with games. For instance, I learned enough machine language to create some routines that would make sounds, and combined them with high-resolution graphics to create a "Game Shell" that would let students write their own games. I wrote utility programs students could use to create game backgrounds and shapes to animate on the screen. I wrote a teacher's grade book program to track my students' progress in disk files and print out reports. The most heroic Applesoft I wrote was in the logic for a crossword puzzle generator which would take a list of students' spelling words and print out a usable crossword puzzle. Some of the logic lines I wrote approached the 255-character limit. I'm still proud of them.
Eventually my community's lack of support and respect for teachers persuaded me to move to the corporate world, where the pay is better but the programming is a lot less fun.
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Nostalgia is good stalgia! I did useful, problem-solving things on a Singer/Friden 1152 RPN programmable calculator in 1969 as a high school senior in statistics class...but that only had a 30-step memory. Gorgeous hunk of machinery, though!
In my first full-time job I "stepped outside the box" and helped a process engineer debug a program in a Casio programmable calculator. About 2000 steps printed on a strip of paper about 5 inches wide laid out across the floor. We scrambled back and forth across the floor following the logic and nailing the bugs.
My first real program was a dBASE II (then III) appointment scheduler for the sales staff at the radio station I DJ'ed for. The general manager was a gadget head and he had one of the first IBM PCs in '81/'82. I used one floppy to load dBASE II, another to hold the data, and a RAM drive to hold the program code. Slicker 'n snot on a pump handle.
During my stint at my first computer company job, I wrote two personally useful things, both on a Digital Equipment Rainbow computer running CP/M. The first was a program to print a nice chess tournament results crosstable. Saved loads of time as I ran quite a few tournaments back then.
The second was a program I used to cheat in a mail-order contest involving coming up with lists of high-value words based on arbitrary letter values in each stage of the contest. I had to type in hundreds (thousands?) of words out of the dictionary before I could let the program rip and find the words with the highest values. I didn't win the contest, though I made it to the final round. Just sat back and let that sucker churn after feeding it the latest list of letter values.
Since then everything's been more mundane, but I'm still at it.
Steven W. Erbach
Neenah, WI
http://thetowncrank.blogspot.com -
Most of the programs I wrote when I first started were in VB3 and were designed to help my parents. I wrote movie and recipy organizers as well as a latters type game. Unfortunately my good programs were never used. My game however became rather addicting to my sisters.
My favorite program was written around the age of 12 or 13 if I remember right. My friend and I were trying to figure out a way to communicate in secret so our parents couldn't spy on anything we said. After trying a few basic codes my imbred paranoia decided they were far to easy to crack and resolved to create a program that could encode and decode messages for us. In the end the program was written in vb4, which was an upgrade for me, and utilized a random mixture of 10 different 5 digit codes for every symbol on the keyboard. Not only that but to access the program required about 5 different password / key combinations pressed at just the right time or the program would close. Also if you missed any of the steps logging in the program would change its password to the most obscure word that I could find in the dictionary. I wish I still had the source code for that though I could do much better now. However I do have the program although its support of winxp isn't too hot.
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"...where the pay is better but the programming is a lot less fun." Boy, I hear you, rbrownson. I love what I do, but I really loved it back then, when it was much more fun.
Thank you, for this great trip down memory lane!!!
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
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OK, maybe this isn't suitable for this forum. But when I was 13 years old, I had access to a Apple II+ with dual 5 1/4" floppies. Hacking in 1983 was done over modems and if you were hacking a machine in New York or Europe you had to repeatedly call the target modem bank and long distance calls could not show up on the phone bill or your parents would get irate.
I wrote a program to dial the 800 number for Sprint/MCI/Metrophone dial a pseudo-random phone card number and then dial the number to a modem bank which ALWAYS answered. I would harvest 2-3 of the special international phone card numbers a night. Each number would work about a month.
DISCLAIMER: In my hacking days, I wanted to gain access to remote machines for educational purposes only. I wanted to mess around on VAX/Unix machines and this was the only way I could gain access to Mainframes, etc... I never had a nefarious purpose in mind and never caused damage to the target machines or stole information. (Only one time did I alter information on the mainframe and it was to change my Parents credit report with TRW). I justified the phone card crimes as all us hackers in the day. "The owner of the card will never have to pay it", "It's a victimless crime," etc... I stopped hacking a couple of years later.
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