I came across a few folks who had to un-learn things :lol: Me too, on a few occasions - but thankfully not many. I think I was just lucky... Without formal training, I tended to learn by reading, then trying out what I'd learned by writing small, isolated pieces of code. Only when I fully understood something at a fundamental level did I then use it.
That said, as a kid I had bad programming habits... I used to code "on the fly", with everything in my head, and I didn't add any in-line documentation. It was a culture shock for me when, in my first job, I found I had to first design any functionality without coding, then hand-write the resulting code on coder's paper sheets, and hand those to someone to have them input into a computer. And I had to book time on a computer to run, test and debug what I'd written. Debugging often meant noting down any problems, going back to my desk, modifying my coding sheets (or re-writing them!) and going back through the same cycle again :o That process made sure you got things absolutely correct on the first cycle as often as possible, if you didn't want to fall behind on delivery dates.
Thanks, Dave :) I remember the CoCo 2... I used to see them at my local Tandy store :D A friend of my Dad's had an earlier TRS-80 that I played around with for a while. Another friend, later on, had a Dragon 64, so I got to mess around with 6809 code a little when he was writing programmes for that.
I was crazy about computers - it consumed a huge amount of my time as a child, right the way through my teenage years, and it became my chosen career (at least to begin with). I had an awful lot of luck and good fortune along the way, though...
I started with the ZX-81, wrote some games and self-published a book of them... sold around a hundred copies of that through a local newsagents. That paid for my next computer, a Sharp MZ-80K, a year or two later. It was a fantastic machine... it had the benefit of loading the OS into RAM from tape deck at startup, so I had easy access to all sorts of development tools - compilers, assemblers, debuggers etc. I wrote mainly games for that too, one of which was sold commercially through Kuma Computers (looking back, it was quite simple and not very impressive, but it sold reasonably well). With the funds from that, I bought an old CP/M machine - a "Memory 2000" - with CP/M 2.2, and became more interested in the operating system, and controlling I/O systems and devices. Around that time (I think I was 15) I wrote some software for my Dad (at his request) to calculate financing schedules for his business clients when he was on site with them. He worked for Citibank Savings at the time. He showed it to his bosses, and soon after the company bought the code from me. With some of the money from that I bought a huge Westrex Pasca 640 machine with 2 x 8" drives and CP/M 2.2 :)
A couple of years later, I dropped out of school and got my first job as a programmer in the real world. It was a big and very silly risk to take, skipping university as I did, but I was extremely lucky and very driven so it worked out fine.
Not the best approach to learning, and one I'd not recommend to anyone else... but it sure was fun :D
Ah, happy days... :o
Apologies for drifting off-topic. I think you're right, Dave... a thread on "first computers" might be fun :)
