"Pascal" entries

I’ve never formally trained to be a programmer, outside of occasional conference workshops and a week of XSL tutorials. In some ways, that’s terrible, because it’s taken me about thirty years to learn what some friends of mine appear to have learned in four. I’ve written some code that goes way beyond spaghetti, though fortunately the worst of it was probably when I was 15.

On the bright side, when I look past my many mistakes, I can see what I learned from a large number of various different experiences, and the pieces they helped me see. It’s a little easier to tell this story through the parts than it might be through a formal curriculum.

My parents’ FORTRAN books

I was reading computer books—dry ones—before I even got to play. I have vague memories about program structure, but mostly I learned that knowledge sticks better if it includes hands-on work, and not just a book.

Sinclair ZX81

1K of memory! The sheer thrill of seeing my creations on screen was amazing. I had just enough logic to get things done, and leave myself puzzled. The Sinclair community seemed focused on making great small things. I learned simple logic in BASIC and that sometimes it takes a hack to get things done.

Applesoft BASIC

After Sinclair BASIC, Applesoft seemed vast. Much of what I did was transfer what I’d done on the Sinclair (itself a lesson in platform-shifting). As I settled, I started writing larger and larger programs, eventually forcing myself to restructure everything into subroutines…with global variables, of course.

6502 Assembly

I knew there was more than BASIC. My early adventures with assembly language were mostly about graphics, and didn’t work all that well, but I picked up two key things: recursion and the importance of registers.

Read more…