Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Owe My Life to the Commodore 64

goto10retro.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 107 posts

Re: I Owe My Life to the Commodore 64

#91

Post by tanseydavid »

jhbadger wrote: post #55
tanseydavid wrote: post #37

I wanted an Apple II so badly and thought I was getting the short-end-of-the-stick with a C64 but I am so happy (to this day) that my first machine at home was C64. I still have my tattered C64 Programmer's Reference Guide on my shelf (as well as Programming the 6502 by Rodnay Zaks).

If only the C64's floppy drives weren't so unbearably slow! And they even had their own CPUs -- the Apple II may have had worse graphics and sound (to be fair it was designed five years before the C64), but its floppy drives were far faster than the C64's despite being "dumb" (but then they were designed by Steve Wozniak, a singular genius).

The price + graphics and sound (out-of-the-box) was what really made the difference for me and self-learning.

But I learned a lot more about disk data organization (hardware-level) via the Apple IIs that were at school.

An interesting side-note: a major factor in my family's decision to get me any computer at all was that I was staying after school almost everyday until usually 7pm.

Mom thought surely I must be lying about it and doing something else, probably nothing good.

She made a appointment to meet with the Computer teacher to ask him directly: he confirmed that I was there regularly, had keys for the computer room, and that maybe she should consider getting me my own machine for home.

Re: I Owe My Life to the Commodore 64

#93

Post by sungjwoo »

aa-jv wrote: post #85
sungjwoo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the answer is incredibly simple: my aunt speaks fluent German! She moved to Austria as a young woman and picked up the language, and picked up a husband. :) She speaks Korean, of course, so that's how we all are able to communicate with her. Recently we were at a family gathering, and one of my extended relations is married to a German fellow (who speaks both German and English fluently), and it was utterly cool…

Great! Did you ever visit Austria? Maybe you can take some of the early impressions of German-language speaking with you ..

I have visited Austria many times, on my own with my wife and also thanks to a friend who was stationed there for a few years. Vienna is such a lovely city, and I got to see one of my favorite paintings (maybe my most favorite painting, really), Gustave Klimt's The Kiss, in person at Belvedere. My aunt lives a number of hours away from Vienna so I never got to see her there, so a return trip is not out of the question!

Re: I Owe My Life to the Commodore 64

#94

Post by sungjwoo »

ylee wrote: post #80

I can relate much to the author's experience. I am also a Korean immigrant, with parents who owned a retail business, who grew up in the NYC area with a Commodore 64. I also majored in the liberal arts at an Ivy League school. I have never been paid to write code, and my formal CS education is limited to AP Computer Science, and a one-credit Java class in college. But my computer background got me hired into tech inv…

Hello my Korean brother! Thanks so much for sharing your story, too. I started out as an engineer (materials science) then switched to English my sophomore year after realizing I couldn't imagine doing that for another three years.

But now look at us, we're like safecrackers in movies who try to go straight but end up in front of the vault again. :)

Re: I Owe My Life to the Commodore 64

#95

Post by sungjwoo »

aa-jv wrote: post #79

1977; I was with my Mum visiting one of her friends. Bored out of my mind I poked around her living room and peeked underneath a cover, expecting to see a typewriter - it was a teletype terminal with the earcup telephone/modem receptacle, a stream of z-paper folds neatly piled up like some holy sacrament, with which my Mums friend was learning computing. She taught me a few commands, which I still remember and use to…

Holy cow!! Tech has been like a coiling vine around the trunk of your life, and what a life it's been. The C64 was just one of your many computer branches. :)

Re: I Owe My Life to the Commodore 64

#96

Post by raddan »

aa-jv wrote: post #81
bruce511 wrote: post #7

There was this era in the late 70's and early 80's where this story is ubiquitous. And while we are all in our 50s or later now, it's interesting that we were essentially the "first generation". When I went to work in the early 90s we were already the "old guys". Out in the real world everyone[1] who could use a computer at all was under 30. And we'd all cut our teeth on Apple 2's and Spectrum and Commodore and BBC a…

Those of us who grew up with computers are truly a special breed, since we had to know how things work in order to do anything at all with the things. These days kids are served eyeball-bleeding chaos on the supercomputers in their pocket, which they need permission to do anything else with .. and its kind of sad. Learn what a byte is, kids. Learn where it fits into a register and why. Learn a few opcodes, some perip…

I 100% agree with you, but as a person who came up in the tail end of the generation we’re discussing (we bought a bargain bin TI-99/4a at K-Mart) and also a faculty member who has been teaching young people how to program for the last ten years, I can tell you that the overwhelming response they have to your exhortation is “WHY?” The current crop of computer users is basically everybody, and the current crop of CS students has primarily been motivated by well-paying jobs [1]. So really, if you want to get through to them, you have to motivate why they should care about bits and bytes in the first place.

Astonishingly, the Jobsian “bicycle for the mind” idea failed. Almost nobody now buys a computer to scratch an itch. They buy a computer (smartphone) to keep in touch with friends and family and to sometimes play games. The idea that software is a service that you pay for has been totally normalized. I find that it takes an entire semester of “imagine if!” scenarios before students start to catch on that WOW THIS IS AN AMAZING MACHINE! Some of them never get it. By analogy it’s like being upset at somebody in the 1970’s for blithely using their telephone without even stopping to consider what a fucking miracle the modern telephone system was. They would just stare at you like you have two heads.

I don’t really know how to change this, but I feel like this is the central battle in the fight us scientists and nerds need to fight in order to get the world to give a shit… about anything.

[1] this may be changing

Re: I Owe My Life to the Commodore 64

#97

Post by bruce511 »

II2II wrote: post #87
bruce511 wrote: post #7

There was this era in the late 70's and early 80's where this story is ubiquitous. And while we are all in our 50s or later now, it's interesting that we were essentially the "first generation". When I went to work in the early 90s we were already the "old guys". Out in the real world everyone[1] who could use a computer at all was under 30. And we'd all cut our teeth on Apple 2's and Spectrum and Commodore and BBC a…

> yes there were folks from before that saw a PDP or whatever but they were rare, and usually either deep in academia or IBM etc. Was it a case of being rare, or of computers being something they used at work (and only work) so they simply didn't talk about computers outside of that context? Judging from stories of the early days of personal computers, those people mostly fell into two camps: those who were excited a…

There definitely were machines in (larger) businesses before the personal computers of the 80s, but the scales are different.

There were around 650 000 PDP machines produced. By contrast Commodore 64 made over 12.5 million. VIC 20 another 1.5. Zx Spectrum about 5 mil. Similar for the Apple 2. IBM pc made 7.5 million by 1987. BBC Micro another couple million.

And of course yes, these were the first "home" pcs. So as I said, before this time the machines were locked away and only used for "real work". PCs were "everywhere". We had a computer club (with 2, count them 2 machines).

Of course, compared to now they were rare. But my generation entered the work-force and spent the 90s "computerising" businesses. Not the giant corporates but the millions of regular businesses. I wrote software but it was common to have to supply hardware to go with the software.

It certainly was fun being around as an entire industry was birthed. It was very dynamic, things moved quickly, and there was a lot of "keeping up".

We saw it again with web, and then mobile, but they were less exciting in many respects.

Re: I Owe My Life to the Commodore 64

#98

Post by bruce511 »

raddan wrote: post #96
aa-jv wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those of us who grew up with computers are truly a special breed, since we had to know how things work in order to do anything at all with the things. These days kids are served eyeball-bleeding chaos on the supercomputers in their pocket, which they need permission to do anything else with .. and its kind of sad. Learn what a byte is, kids. Learn where it fits into a register and why. Learn a few opcodes, some perip…

I 100% agree with you, but as a person who came up in the tail end of the generation we’re discussing (we bought a bargain bin TI-99/4a at K-Mart) and also a faculty member who has been teaching young people how to program for the last ten years, I can tell you that the overwhelming response they have to your exhortation is “WHY?” The current crop of computer users is basically everybody, and the current crop of CS s…

I think "why" is a good question. And frankly for 99.9% of people the answer is "no reason".

One has to differentiate between "computers as a tool" and "creating computers".

I drive a car. It's good transport. If it breaks I take it to a mechanic. If I bash it I take it to a panel beater. I don't care about engine specs. It's a tool to do a job.

100 years ago if you owned a car you also had to be a mechanic. My father built his own car. Enthusiasts will wax lyrical for hours on engine upgrades.

In the same way, when I was young, the market for computers was basically the "creatives". There wasn't much software to buy. Most (PC) computers got built from parts. You could swap out each part at a time. You set IRQs manually. Good times.

But those products didn't suit the everyman. That only happens in the late 90s. Since then most users are "consumers" not creative.

The creatives still have lots of tools to learn (more than I did). But they will never be more than a tiny tiny fraction of the population.

Re: I Owe My Life to the Commodore 64

#99

Post by weinzierl »

evanelias wrote: post #64
weinzierl wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you grew up with a Commodore your mid life is way past.

How do you figure? Commodore had strong sales through the late 80s, and the C64 wasn't discontinued until 1994. My family's C64 was the first computer I ever used, and I am barely in my mid 40s. And although my family later purchased an IBM PC clone around '89 or '90, that just meant the C64 moved into my older brother's room, where we used it even more.

Life expectancy for most people on HN should be around 72 (give or take), so mid life is in your mid thirties.

Also, using the Commodore in the 90's is probably pretty rare.

Re: I Owe My Life to the Commodore 64

#100

Post by phs318u »

II2II wrote: post #87
bruce511 wrote: post #7

There was this era in the late 70's and early 80's where this story is ubiquitous. And while we are all in our 50s or later now, it's interesting that we were essentially the "first generation". When I went to work in the early 90s we were already the "old guys". Out in the real world everyone[1] who could use a computer at all was under 30. And we'd all cut our teeth on Apple 2's and Spectrum and Commodore and BBC a…

> yes there were folks from before that saw a PDP or whatever but they were rare, and usually either deep in academia or IBM etc. Was it a case of being rare, or of computers being something they used at work (and only work) so they simply didn't talk about computers outside of that context? Judging from stories of the early days of personal computers, those people mostly fell into two camps: those who were excited a…

> those people mostly fell into two camps: those who were excited about getting their hands on a computer of their own, and those who dismissed personal computers as useless toys

Or, as I called them: me, and dad.

Post reply on HN