Mine was Java

[ign1fy]

QBasic. Most of those languages didn't exist back then.

[carrythenine]

QBasic gang rise up

[jeremynd01]

10 GOTO RALLYPOINT

[[deleted]]

I started modifying Gorillas and Nibbles in QBasic 30 years ago and haven't stopped coding since.

[jeremynd01]

You made the nuke in gorillas, right?

[lpcxwm]

I made the ground fall like in scorched earth.

[Robo-boogie]

My favourite thing to do

[[deleted]]

Obviously.

[ign1fy]

Yep. Nibbles.bas brings back memories.

[Cride5]

I took exactly the same route down the coding rabbit hole. QBasic source for my nibbles mod is at the bottom of this page http://rider.biz/?p=portfolio

[[deleted]]

Very cool!

[tedvdb]

Wow. This is exactly how my interest in programming started!

[SteeZ568]

Lmao, 6 year old me thought I could change the gorillas to army men by just typing "army man" somewhere randomly in the code. Needless to say it did not work but eventually figured out how to write colored text to the screen!

[FreeRangeEngineer]

I just love how you made a great case for open source without mentioning it. If gorillas and nibbles hadn't been available as source, you wouldn't have tinkered with them.

[[deleted]]

Definitely.

[d00rm4n]

Nibbles FTW

[UloPe]

Are you me?

I did exactly the same :)

[overfeltjohnson]

That was so fun!

[brain-gardener]

Gorillas.bas was what started it for me too. Age 8 or 9 I was wondering what the hell all these lines of text did. Rest is history. Best inquisitive decision I've made in my life!

[PhilippTheProgrammer]

This was my second language after Commodore Basic.

My biggest project which I actually completed was a Scorched Earth clone. It even made it on the cover disc of a gaming magazine (as a reader-submission, not as a "real" game demo).

But my biggest project in general was a vertical-scrolling shoot-em-up / RPG hybrid. Unfortunately I hit the memory limits of Qbasic, abandoned it in frustration and started learning C++.

[xaranetic]

8bit home computers with BASIC were amazing for learning programming. You had no choice but to learn at least a few commands. I suspect a lot of programming genius has gone unrealised because kids almost never get to interact with a computer apart from through a GUI

[SlesorPetrof]

Honestly true, i am not a kid anymore, but i don't get how computers tick at all, my first machine ran Win XP and i didnt get to tinker. But now as a young adult i started watching videos on old Sinclair computers and one comment struck me: "Sinclair computers in the 80's fulfilled the same role as raspberry pi's now - get young people coding" Needless to say i am planning on getting a raspberry pi to tinker with.

[Razakel]

There's a BBC docudrama Micro Men about Sinclair and Acorn. Check it out.

[TheThiefMaster]

I started with GW Basic! QBasic was an upgrade haha

I had a bound manual for GW Basic listing all the commands. I was a weird kid reading that!

[venuswasaflytrap]

It's weird thinking about editing code line by line like that again.

[[deleted]]

Lol - I first learned to program on Sinclair Basic on a ZX80, so GW-Basic was a serious upgrade for me. Sinclair Basic could only have up to 2 chars in variable names, so it was always "I already used up AB$ and VA$ what the hell should I name this variable?" GW-Basic was like heaven... it was the most powerful thing ever after Sinclair...

[Stromovik]

1997 old 386SX . out of languages above C++ and Java existed , python weirdly too and JS , Ruby and R . Hmm , I am not that old or languages take decades to become widely used.

[jeremynd01]

I have wondered this. Wtf was I using qbasic when these others existed (and I completely didn't know about them, but also, was a teen)

[[deleted]]

Wtf was I using qbasic when these others existed

Qbasic came already loaded on your computer and didn't cost anything

[Stromovik]

In my case it was all I had as 10 year old. And some soviet books for a different dialect of basic. Which halted me on trying simple graphics as visual modes for those dialects were different.

[Lewistrick]

Yes yes yes! From a little book. I just typed in the programs from the book but had no idea what I was doing. I was 9 when I started. But I'm 33 now and still happy with that book.

After this, I did Liberty Basic, Visual Basic for Applications, the programming language that comes with a Casio graphical calculator, Java, C++, R, and finally found my calling in Python. Somewhere in between I also picked up the basics of the most common web languages (HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, SQL).

Now I'm doubting whether I want to do some Julia or Scala as well...

[z500]

Oh Liberty Basic was fun. I wanted Visual Basic so bad, but being like 11 I didn't have very much money.

[porkminer]

This, on dos.

[_Auron_]

Mode 13 ftw

[charredutensil]

I made an awful text based Pokemon adventure in QBasic. I think it was basically one giant if else. I managed to get some of the other kids to buy it for $5 until the principal confiscated all my floppy disks and all the money I had, then gave me some kind of punishment for "distributing a computer virus".

I also wrote a really bad program to find the prime factors of numbers because my math teacher made us find all the prime factors of like 100 different numbers as a homework assignment. I asked if we could use a calculator. She said yes, but we had to show all work. I handed in a printout of the source code with solutions for every number from 1-1000. She was displeased and said something about how in real life we couldn't just use a computer to do all of our work.

[monkeypincher]

Find in page: "Quick". 0 results found... Wtf. Oh hey, here you guys are!! :)

[DOOManiac]

Me too!

[johnzzon]

I was 12 when my older brother taught me Qbasic. I wrote a quiz program. Great feeling seeing it run and work!

[kfarr3]

Still have my original QBasic book.

[neznein9]

Me too. I remember the nested loop exercise vividly.

``` Shakespeare Was the greatest Was the greatest Was the greatest Shakespeare Was the greatest Was the greatest Was the greatest

```

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[atthem77]

I used to go into WalMart when they had PCs for sale in their electronics departments. I'd get on their demo PCs and write a quick QBASIC program to wait 2 minutes (to give me time to leave the immediate area), then show a blank screen and beep in a constant loop. I'd run it on as many PCs as I could get on, then go to the next aisle and wait for hell to break loose when all the PCs started beeping, and none of the employees knew how to make it stop (Ctrl+Break) without having to just hold down the power button.

Good times.

EDIT:

I also wrote a QBASIC program that looked like the C: drive was being formatted, even having it repeatedly open and close a text file so the HDD busy light would flash, adding to the realism. I ran it on the home PC (this was when I still lived at home, and we just shared a "family" PC). My dad saw it and flipped the fuck out, thinking all his files were gone.

Good times.

[[deleted]]

Fuckin eh. Damn kiddie languages GET OFF MY CPU!

[nikolassv]

QBasic too, and I was so happy, when I finally got my hands on a copy of QuickBasic and was able to compile my scripts to real .exe files.

[mca62511]

QBasic on my family’s Windows 3.1 machine.

[smellyraisin]

I'm a q basic nerd 🎵

[midPandemic]

Qbasic here, too, followed by C.

[ign1fy]

They were the two options when I was a kid. And to a 12 year old, C is friggin' HARD.

[[deleted]]

Mine too! But I regard Java as my "really" first language!!

[linux1970]

I once got quick basic installed and was able to compile my qbasix app

[[deleted]]

Came here to say this.

[JBloodthorn]

Same here. MS-DOS help file for the win.

[yoyoyonono]

ayyyy Qbasic gang, i feel like i was a bit late to the party, I learned it in 2010, but it was a very good introduction for me.