Pencil and paper with lots of boxes that we drew, with boxes inside them, and boxes inside them, all the way down because proofing code; sometimes you could get funky and draw boxes from the inside out.
Ask HN: Which IDE was your first when you started coding?
11–20 of 20 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which IDE was your first when you started coding?
#12I thing it was Borland Turbo C++ 3.0 for MS-DOS.
It had syntax highlighting, integrated help with full language and API documentation. Which was useful because I didn't have Internet access back then, at the beginning of the 1990's.
I had to buy a new PC with an Intel 386 CPU, and add "extended memory" to run the IDE. It couldn't run with only 640 Ko of RAM.
Re: Ask HN: Which IDE was your first when you started coding?
#13Sinclair BASIC on ZX Spectrum
AHAHAHA
Re: Ask HN: Which IDE was your first when you started coding?
#14Sinclair BASIC on ZX Spectrum AHAHAHA
I just wrote my first program in Basic with my dad's help...
I still remember that, guessing numbers from 1 to 10. It was great fun!
Re: Ask HN: Which IDE was your first when you started coding?
#15Borland Turbo Pascal.
Re: Ask HN: Which IDE was your first when you started coding?
#16Turbo Pascal 3 for DOS was the first thing that could be called an IDE that I used, but not the first programming environment.
Same but first programming environment was ZX Spectrum BASIC.
Re: Ask HN: Which IDE was your first when you started coding?
#17Turbo Pascal 3 for DOS was the first thing that could be called an IDE that I used, but not the first programming environment.
Interesting! I wish I had started programming so early!
I did (1986) things aren't so different, hardware is monumentally faster and developer tools are more powerful but its still text describing what you want the machine to do in detail.
The first three languages I learned are still around (BASIC, Pascal and C).
Re: Ask HN: Which IDE was your first when you started coding?
#18Sinclair BASIC on ZX Spectrum AHAHAHA
I just wrote my first program in Basic with my dad's help... I still remember that, guessing numbers from 1 to 10. It was great fun!
yeah, i had to learn it alone - my father didn't know how to program :p
10 PRINT "good old days"
20 GO TO 10
RUN
AHAHA
Re: Ask HN: Which IDE was your first when you started coding?
#19Borland C++
Re: Ask HN: Which IDE was your first when you started coding?
#20ISPF on TSO (IBM mainframes), assuming that punch cards and mark sense cards don't count.
In doing cleaning and purging on the house, I just found something I forgot I had: an ISPF implementation for use on MS-DOS!