16 Jan
2001
16 Jan
'01
2:49 a.m.
I don't know why Intuit has survived, but I am
kind of curious given the
boneheadedness of the product. I mean everybodies first two programs are,
hello world, then checkbook. Granted they have put more than a little
polish on Checkbook 1.0, but they have also managed to drag it out over 9
major releases.
Being a bad seed, my first program printed out random vulgar phrases
instead of "hello world". This was on a CDC-6500 running Dual-MACE at
Purdue University.
My next two programs were a program to compute the dynamic compliance
of a tonearm, and another to compute, based on the native resonant
frequency of a driver (speaker), and the proposed dimensions of a room
to be constructed, the frequencies where the bass would resonate in
the room, and the distribution of the nodes (antinodes?). Over a two-
week period, I coded these programs in CDC-6000 Series BASIC, CDC-6000
Series Fortran, and our local port of Niklaus Wirth's Pascal Compiler.
Eventually, I bought Electric Checkbook for the Macintosh, a great
program I rarely used due to extra work of maintaining my check
register.
The moral of this tale: Beware of Geeks bearing Revisionist History.
;-)
-dq
16 Jan
16 Jan
3:17 a.m.
I don't
know why Intuit has survived, but I am kind of curious given the
boneheadedness of the product. I mean everybodies first two programs are,
hello world, then checkbook. Granted they have put more than a little
polish on Checkbook 1.0, but they have also managed to drag it out over 9
major releases.
Being a bad seed, my first program printed out random vulgar phrases
instead of "hello world". This was on a CDC-6500 running Dual-MACE at
Purdue University. 
8:05 a.m.
New subject: first programs
And all my hello world programs these days say,
"Mortimer, we're back!" Of
course, this was all after 1987.
I think my first program on the Tomy Tutor was a 2+2 program. My first
program on the C64 was a recipe box.
-- Cameron Kaiser
My first memorable (to me) program on the C-64 was "scribble". It randomly
changed
accellerations as it drew a line around the screen, with a tendency to drift back
toward the center. It really did look like a scribble. I was quite proud of it. My
friends didn't understand.
-- John Tinker
8:50 a.m.
New subject: first programs
My first useful program was a graphical alarm clock. I'm a dropout and so
missed math education beyond arithmetic. This is why I do all my agebraic
problems linearly as you do in programing. I still don't understand how
and why algebra is done the way it is in schools. Boolean algebra makes
so much more sense to me.
Anyway, I was trying to plot the face of a circular clock. First I tried
using PI as the base for the plotting and my clock's face came out wierd
and incomplete. After messing with the program for some hours I realized
that OF COURSE a circle derived from pi was going to be incomplete because
PI is irrational. No matter how many digits after the dicimal you use, you
will never get a complete circle, just a progressively less incomplete
one. Duh. Back to the drawing board.
I started hitting the trig functions looking for an answer and hit on
Sine/cosine as the way to do it. Educating yourself is hard and you often
have to backtrack like that.
The alarm clock worked perfectly within the accuracy limits of my Atari
8-bit's real-time clock. Because of video refresh 'stealing' jiffies, it
would lose a few seconds per day. Prior to this, I'd written the standard
"hello world" stuff, but this was the first really useful program I'd
written.
Another was a program which drove an optical digitizer I built from a
fiber-optic cable, an infrared fiber optic detector (variable
potentiomiter) and some tape. It plugged into the joystick port and used
the Vpot analog to digital converter the machine uses to 'read'
paddle-type game controllers. The tape-wrapped end of the fiber optic
cable fit nicely into one of the pen bays on an Atari 1020 color plotter.
Run a photo into the plotter and start the program. After a few minutes,
the photo is on screen in 16 shades of grey. Saving the image was as
simple as an incremeted "peek" and store of each location in screen
memory. I was very proud of it at the age of 14. I still have the program
and some 'girly' pictures I digitized with it, but the scanner hardware is
long lost. Sigh. My adolescent friends TOTALLY understood. ;-),
Regards,
Jeff
In <3A649B7E.5B429052(a)coin.org>rg>, on 01/16/01
at 02:50 PM, John Tinker <jtinker(a)coin.org> said:
My first memorable (to me) program on the C-64 was
"scribble". It
randomly changed accellerations as it drew a line around the screen, with
a tendency to drift back toward the center. It really did look like a
scribble. I was quite proud of it. My friends didn't understand.
-- John Tinker
--
-----------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey S. Worley
President
Complete Computer Services, Inc.
30 Greenwood Rd.
Asheville, NC 28803
828-277-5959
Visit our website at HTTP://www.Real-Techs.com
THETechnoid(a)home.com
-----------------------------------------------------------
11:33 a.m.
New subject: first programs
My first useful program was a graphical alarm clock.
I'm a dropout and so
The first program I did after I got my Timex-Sinclair 1000 in
'82 was the same thing. I don't recall any longer where I got the
basic program, but it didn't have a second hand so I spent a while
keying it in and then 3-4 more hours trying to add the second hand to
it. Unfortunately, I inadvertently wiggled the machine before I was
finished and lost it all. My first program that I wrote on any
machine was an attempt at solving an Algebra problem that the text
books said was unsolvable. This was done on a TRS-80 Model III.
Jeff
--
Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems:
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
11:49 a.m.
New subject: first programs
Hi
My first program was inplementing a life program on
my first computer, a Poly88. It was all entered in
machine code from hand assembled code. I looked at the
different issue of how the edges of the screen were dealt
with. You know; fall of the table, wrap straight, wrap helical,
reflected and so forth.
Dwight
12:11 p.m.
New subject: OT! My wedding
Please feel free to ignore this message.
I'm not sure anyone but me cares, but I would like to 'see' some of you
and assume some of you might be curious enough to 'see' me. You people
fascinate me and it seems natural to assume the reverse. In that sense, I
think this message is on-topic. We are a community of sorts after all, and
that community has given me a great deal.
If you would like to see me and my family you are welcome. I've got my
wedding 'Mpeged' thanks to the efforts of a good friend and if you would
like to view it, you may by anonymous ftp.
FTP to 24.15.74.214 and set for binary. Get wwedding.mpg. It is not your
standard, boring ceremony and is worth the time.
Fair warning: I'm limited by my provider to 16kpbs for outgoing traffic
and the video is 150mb or so.
You're login is "anonymous" and no password is required or requested.
Your's truely,
The Worley family
--
-----------------------------------------------------------
The Worley family:
30 Greenwood Rd.
Asheville, NC 28803
828-274-5781
THETechnoid(a)home.com
-----------------------------------------------------------
12:13 p.m.
New subject: first programs
The first program I did after I got my Timex-Sinclair
1000 in
'82 was the same thing. I don't recall any longer where I got the
basic program, but it didn't have a second hand so I spent a while
keying it in and then 3-4 more hours trying to add the second hand to
it. Unfortunately, I inadvertently wiggled the machine before I was
finished and lost it all.
I'm sorry, I died laughing at this point from sympathy, since a good
thwack to my 1000's 1016 RAM pack has historically been the quickest
way to crash the machine. :-)
--
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- What you don't mean, can't hurt you. -- Firesign Theater -------------------
1:08 p.m.
New subject: first programs
Cameron Kaiser <spectre(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu> wrote:
Hi
This is when I learned about using silicon grease on the
fingers of the connector. When coated, I could drop it
onto a carpeted floor from table height without loss of
data. I never tried it on a hard floor but then the first
drop wasn't intended.
Dwight
The first
program I did after I got my Timex-Sinclair 1000 in
'82 was the same thing. I don't recall any longer where I got the
basic program, but it didn't have a second hand so I spent a while
keying it in and then 3-4 more hours trying to add the second hand to
it. Unfortunately, I inadvertently wiggled the machine before I was
finished and lost it all.
I'm sorry, I died laughing at this point from sympathy, since a good
thwack to my 1000's 1016 RAM pack has historically been the quickest
way to crash the machine. :-)
1:20 p.m.
New subject: first programs
The first
program I did after I got my Timex-Sinclair 1000 in
'82 was the same thing. I don't recall any longer where I got the
basic program, but it didn't have a second hand so I spent a while
keying it in and then 3-4 more hours trying to add the second hand to
it. Unfortunately, I inadvertently wiggled the machine before I was
finished and lost it all.
I'm sorry, I died laughing at this point from sympathy, since a good
thwack to my 1000's 1016 RAM pack has historically been the quickest
way to crash the machine. :-) 
1:04 p.m.
New subject: first programs
THETechnoid skrev:
Another was a program which drove an optical digitizer
I built from a
fiber-optic cable, an infrared fiber optic detector (variable
potentiomiter) and some tape. It plugged into the joystick port and used
the Vpot analog to digital converter the machine uses to 'read'
paddle-type game controllers. The tape-wrapped end of the fiber optic
cable fit nicely into one of the pen bays on an Atari 1020 color plotter.
Run a photo into the plotter and start the program. After a few minutes,
the photo is on screen in 16 shades of grey. Saving the image was as
simple as an incremeted "peek" and store of each location in screen
memory. I was very proud of it at the age of 14. I still have the program
and some 'girly' pictures I digitized with it, but the scanner hardware is
long lost. Sigh. My adolescent friends TOTALLY understood. ;-),
I saw a similar construction on Computerclub (German television), but they
built a drum scanner instead, wrapping the source image onto a roll which sat
upon an old grammophone, while the scanner head was slowly moved downwards. No
girlie pictures, though. =)
--
En ligne avec Thor 2.6.
Menyn ?r inte lika sexig som telnet, det ?r h?rt men sant.
Petri Oksanen #38 p? SUGA BBS
8570
days inactive
8570
days old
10 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
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dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com -
elvey＠hal.com -
jhellige＠earthlink.net -
jtinker＠coin.org -
optimus＠canit.se -
spectre＠stockholm.ptloma.edu -
THETechnoid＠home.com