Foone🏳️⚧️
Fun fact about my programming career:
My first program ever written was around age 10 and it was a port of a game from one language to another.
Not first "completed game" or even "first serious program": the very first code I ever wrote was me reading a BASIC game out of a book, then reading the DOS 5 manual enough to figure out how to port the game to a DOS batch file.
Foone🏳️⚧️
There's an alternate universe where I got given real programming language environments and wrote "hello world" as my first program.
That universe's foone is probably a lot more normal than this one's
Foone🏳️⚧️
My family didn't have a computer at the time. I had to wait until we visited my grandparents (who lived about 2 hours away) to write any code.
Foone🏳️⚧️
I think fundamentally I'm a programmer because my local library failed me
Foone🏳️⚧️
See around 1994 or so I was like "I WANT TO PROGRAM COMPUTERS" (because of Bigfoot and UFOs, but that's a different story) but my local library didn't have a very up to date computer section.
So all the books were from the 80s, and expected you to have an 8-bit micro that of course booted to BASIC
Foone🏳️⚧️
So they were all "to program a computer, just turn it on and type in these basic commands!"
And I go home and turn on the Packard Bell 486 and type in some code!
C:\> 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!"
BAD COMMAND OR FILE NAME
Foone🏳️⚧️
So, facing an obstacle with no one who could help (my parents didn't know anything about computers, and my grandma who does only visits every few months), I had to Get Serious.
Foone🏳️⚧️
I go to the library and read ALL their computer books. I learn a lot about BASIC without being able to run it.
I read all the manuals, and now I know a lot about DOS and Windows 3.1.
I start experimenting with my computer, trying to find some way to program it.
Foone🏳️⚧️
At one point I try to start reverse engineering windows 3.1 EXE files in order to find out how they're written... This without any knowledge of x86 assembly, or having a hex editor.
I don't get far, but I'm still proud of baby!foone for trying.
Foone🏳️⚧️
Eventually I figure out that DOS is supposed to have a program for running basic code: GWBASIC or QBASIC.
I don't have that program.
Foone🏳️⚧️
We got our Packard Bell used, and the previous owner was some kind of power user who needed every last kilobyte of their hard drive, so they deleted those files.
And forgot to give us the DOS installation disks with the PC, so I couldn't reinstall it.
Foone🏳️⚧️
I think I only got access to a BASIC interpreter when I bought (with my own allowance) the DOS 6.22 upgrade.
I think I'd tried to get the files from my grandma, but there was some issue. Maybe the floppies I copied the files onto went bad? I know that happened a few times... I once excitedly used my grandparents' company's internet connection to download the Duke Nukem 3D shareware (4-5 disks!) and then i waited until we drove home to play it, but it turned out one of the disks died
Foone🏳️⚧️
Anyway I finally got QBASIC, did a bunch of BASIC coding on that, then switched to Visual Basic 5 after a random stranger sent it to me over ICQ, and around 2000 I learnt C/C++ and started doing more serious programming.
Foone🏳️⚧️
But I honestly think it was that initial period of hyperfixation that turned me into a programmer. I spent months trying to crack the code (no pun intended) and figure out how to program, and all that effort got me stuck on this path.
Foone🏳️⚧️
If I'd had access to BASIC from the beginning, I can easily imagine my interest just being a passing thing. I spent an afternoon or two typing in simple BASIC code in from the book, then return it to the library and go back to reading their whole sci-fi section
Foone🏳️⚧️
But the initial roadblock of "all the books are in BASIC, and you don't have a BASIC interpreter" was such a problem that it forced me to learn a lot about programming and computers and BASIC before I could get any satisfaction from successfully programming.
And by then I was hooked. I knew too much about programming and computers to NOT make this my life's work.
Foone🏳️⚧️
Going back in time and handing an Apple II to 1994!Foone and when I come back, modern!foone is an author who writes on a typewriter because she can't stand word processors.
She mainly writes "non-fiction" about Bigfoot
Foone🏳️⚧️
@MidniteLibrary nah, I've never done much handwriting.
Computers were also a big thing for me because I can't write by hand for shit, but I can type like a motherfucker
Matthew Murray 🦇
@foone You mean, you weren't writing it by hand first?
Foone🏳️⚧️
@stilescrisis correct!
stilescrisis
@foone Your DOS machine didn't have BASICA or QBASIC?!
Foone🏳️⚧️
@lykso are we cousins? It'd explain a lot
Lykso
@foone Huh. My grandma was also the computer expert of the family, and my first code projects were also in DOS batch script. Wild!
Foone🏳️⚧️
Oh I remembered something about my first program:
Batch got a "choose" command in DOS 6, which let you do interactive prompts, and dynamically GOTO different labels.
I didn't have that. I had DOS 5.
So the game worked by having multiple batch files. It'd drop you to the DOS prompt after telling you what options you had, and when you typed in a command, you were really running a second batch script named COMMAND.bat
Foone🏳️⚧️
So it'd be like:
Which way do you want to go? East or west?
C:\FOONEGAM> west
You head west, the cave narrows, and you hear bats. Go back? (type YES or NO)
C:\FOONEGAM> no
You head deeper into the cave, and eventually it opens back up, and you see light in the distance. You're free!
Foone🏳️⚧️
And you'd be running WEST.BAT and YES.BAT out of that folder, since I couldn't do choices.
But the fun part is the randomization. How do you think that worked if I couldn't do choices and gotos?
Foone🏳️⚧️
So which choices led to the good ending was "randomized" semi manually.
Foone🏳️⚧️
Simple: I wrote a SHUFFLE.BAT that would rotate the ending files. So YES.BAT became EAST.BAT, the old EAST.BAT became WEST.BAT, and the old WEST.BAT became YES.BAT.
You'd type SHUFFLE at the prompt, then spam F3 (to recall the previous command) and Enter to run it a bunch of times.
Foone🏳️⚧️
Also, the way you died was being swarmed by bats.
That wasn't an intentional joke: the BASIC program I was porting used that same enemy, where it wasn't funny that your character died from bats.
Having the program that told you you died from bats be a BAT file? Now that was funny!
Foone🏳️⚧️
@hlangeveld that book is a treasure
Henk Langeveld
@foone That's how I spent my time around 1979.
I borrowed David Ahl's 100 Basic Computer Games and typed them into my neighbour's Apple ][+ (or europlus, as it had PAL, not NTSC)
Foone🏳️⚧️
Anyway, implementing a simple choose-your-own-adventure game with randomized endings in MS-DOS 5 Batch files is the kind of thing I might to today as a weird retrocomputing project, because it's obviously such a terrible way to make a game that it's an interesting intellectual challenge to figure out how to do, you know?
And I had to do it at age 10 as my first program with only a programming guide for A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE and a DOS manual explaining all the batch commands
Foone🏳️⚧️
I think this explains a lot about me.
So if you were ever wondering why the fuck I'm like this:
this is either why, or proof that I've been like this for decades.
Foone🏳️⚧️
@stilescrisis I got the PC used, with no install disks, and the previous owner deleted the BASIC program
stilescrisis
@foone At the risk of asking a dumb question... why not?!? I thought BASIC came with every PC of DOS vintage.
Foone🏳️⚧️
Here's hoping I can continue to be like this for decades more.
Lykso
@foone Not likely, but it'd be funny if so. It'd require a secret sibling to exist.
Foone🏳️⚧️
@lykso my wife found out she has TWO separate Secret Siblings, so it's not impossible!
Rue Mohr
@foone older computer and it'd be in the bios.
we should bring back bios basic, we know there is room in there...
Foone🏳️⚧️
@RueNahcMohr yeah! I keep wanting to design a PCIe card that just adds BASIC-in-uefi through an option rom
Foone🏳️⚧️
@gregly nice!
Determination G. Schadenfreude
@foone It wasn’t my first program, but while in junior high I wanted to port Apple LOGO programs to my PC, but all I had was QuickBASIC, so I wrote a library of subroutines that emulated the LOGO turtle graphics well enough that I could translate the programs without much difficulty.
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