Sir Clive Sinclair has died

Out of curiosity, what switch would that have been? Was it a 220/120V setting?

Very sad news. Like many commenting here, I cut my teeth on a Spectrum; a +3, when I was about 6 or 7. I remember my dad painstakingly inputting the code for an analogue clock program from a book. It took him hours but once I saw the result I was hooked and wrote all kinds of silly little programs, slowly learning what I could create.

My first computer was a home-built ZX81 (manufactured in my hometown of Dundee) given to me by a capable and nerdy family friend, which was quickly replaced by a ZX Spectrum Plus 2 (it had colour and built-in tape deck) that Christmas - a move which has shaped my life ever since.

I have fond (ish!) memories of typing in hex codes and BASIC from computing magazines to create games and demos, and having the ability to see and edit that code almost certainly give me the start of the career I have now.

RIP Sir Clive.

Then don't!

Bloat is the moat were stuck in.

An unsustainable sin,

a cognitive load,

too heavy to comprehend,

a house of cards,

the opposite of smarts.

I owe my career to this golden generation of micros (an Amstrad CPC in my case). Much respect to the man who undoubtedly kickstarted this revolution in Britain.

Now, at the risk of sounding blasphemous : the ZX Spectrum is also the most annoyingly overrated, overhyped system in UK retro computing circles, bar none.

While it might technically be able to display 8 (garish) colours (some of which are shades of others) it can't even do it without weird limitations ("colour clash"). For all intents and purposes, its software feels monochrome. You might get a couple of different background colours on screen, but sprites are nearly always monochrome with heavy use of dithering. They leave a lot to the imagination, that's for sure (check out the monochrome rainbows in Rainbow Islands :) )

The keyboard is rubbish, the machine doesn't come with a tape player, it doesn't do standard joysticks. Its BASIC is cryptic and underpowered compared to the Amstrad's (tbh, the C64's isn't great either, maybe the Amstrad just shines here)

All of that was probably fair game for a cheap entry level machine in 1982, but by 1984 the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC were both affordable and running circles around the poor Spectrum (each with their own strengths). Most other European countries had caught wind of this and chose a side (C64 in Germany / Nordics, Amstrad in France / Spain) and yet, Britain kept this bizarre and very unique love affair with the Speccy going strong, well into the early 90s.

Today, the reality distortion field its fans live in would put Apple's to shame. The term "nostalgia goggles" must have been invented for ZX Spectrum Youtubers, seriously : they will do comparison videos between 8-bit conversions of arcade games where any outside observer would find the Spectrum port to be embarrassingly, almost comically inferior to the other two, but they'll still award it the top spot for reasons like "it plays well", or "it looks great despite the good old Speccy's limitations"

On forums, you will show them side by side Amstrad/Spectrum game screenshot comparisons (like this one : https://imgur.com/a/D7Ocd) and they'll still insist the games on the right hand side look better. The publisher of the excellent "visual compendium" series of retrogaming books has one about the Spectrum, refuses to do one with the Amstrad. Go figure...

In the end of course, it's all good fun to be reenacting what is really schoolyard squabble, but the inability of the British to recognise the one homegrown computer they should be proud of never ceases to amaze me ;)