Teenage programmers were always cool.
I was a teenage programmer before teenage programmers were cool
11–20 of 25 posts
Re: I was a teenage programmer before teenage programmers were cool
#12When I was a teenage programmer in Germany I was considered the enemy by many of my classmates. The computer was one of many things Germans of that era were convinced would bring the downfall of society, destruction of the world or worse.
Re: I was a teenage programmer before teenage programmers were cool
#13teenage programmers define their own cool
Exactly my thoughts. Very well stated. :)
Re: I was a teenage programmer before teenage programmers were cool
#14Teenage? I started programming when I was 9 or 10, back in the early 80s.
In the mid-Seventies, the era the OP was talking about, the only way a kid could access computers was at school, and pretty much only high schools had them available to students. The computer would typically be one single minicomputer or a timeshare terminal. His school had both (he was lucky). The teacher was the gatekeeper and decided who had access. Back then, there was no way to start programming at 9 or 10. It t…
Actually there were PC's in the 70's. But they weren't cheap. I had a kit; a Heathkit I built with my grandfather. Much cheaper then the Apple's or other systems available then. And man did I learn a lot building that thing.
Re: I was a teenage programmer before teenage programmers were cool
#15I started circa 2007 with Visual Basic. I am anything but "cool".
From my observations, nothing from Microsoft is considered cool.
Re: I was a teenage programmer before teenage programmers were cool
#16When I was a teenage programmer in Germany I was considered the enemy by many of my classmates. The computer was one of many things Germans of that era were convinced would bring the downfall of society, destruction of the world or worse.
High German Romanticism or not, your classmates may be proven right in the long run.
Re: I was a teenage programmer before teenage programmers were cool
#17Teenage? I started programming when I was 9 or 10, back in the early 80s.
In the mid-Seventies, the era the OP was talking about, the only way a kid could access computers was at school, and pretty much only high schools had them available to students. The computer would typically be one single minicomputer or a timeshare terminal. His school had both (he was lucky). The teacher was the gatekeeper and decided who had access. Back then, there was no way to start programming at 9 or 10. It t…
Which is how I did it back in 74 though we had to learn a assembly language CECIL which we wrote out on coding sheets and sent off to a batch system to be processed.
And this was the CSE stream class for those of us not considered good enough for O levels - ironically as I was in the CSE class I wasn't allowed to take the Computing A level in the 6th form.
Re: I was a teenage programmer before teenage programmers were cool
#18Teenage? I started programming when I was 9 or 10, back in the early 80s.
Me too, but in the later 80s. Basic on C64 -> Amiga. Then a few years without much programming until late 90s. Then I discovered Perl. Sweetness.
Re: I was a teenage programmer before teenage programmers were cool
#19Hey Hey 16K, What would that get you today?
Re: I was a teenage programmer before teenage programmers were cool
#20In 1972 there were young teen programmers on the (then) Univ. of Illinois plasma panel graphic-based PLATO IV computer system (based on Control Data mainframes) from Univ of Illinois Laboratory High School (diagonal across the street from the computer facility). Indeed Uni-hi had two of these terminals. Springfield (IL) high students also used the system then because their high school had a terminal.
In fact in 1974 or so one student at the high school taught half the 7th grade class (12 year olds) how to program computers using PLATO.
In 1973 a then 17-year-old David Woolley (also from Uni-hi) implemented a electronic forum system on PLATO http://thinkofit.com/plato/dwplato.htm#origdev
Ray Ozzie was also a college student working on this system.
See also: http://platohistory.org/
If you want, you can try out PLATO at http://cyber1.org/