What Was Your First Computer? 1485
michaelmichael writes "News.com.com is running a special report, asking readers to tell everyone what their first computer was. This was prompted by another article commemorating the 60th anniversary of ENIAC." I started on a trash 80 in like 5th grade. And although I did a lot of programming and games on 8086s, it wasn't until I got a 286 in middle school that I really considered a machine "Mine".
Amiga 500+ (Score:5, Insightful)
VIC 20 (Score:3, Insightful)
Then... Amiga 500, Amiga 1200, then I got my first PC, an IBM BlueLightning, specifically to play Doom.
Unfortunately all I did on all of those machines was play games. Had I started programming earlier...
Vic 20 (Score:5, Insightful)
And then about 8 years later the Amiga 500. Then I decided to slum it with the rest of the world and got a 286.
I really wish they would make a console system that could be programmed out of the box. That's why I'm a programmer today, because I was able to write my own games as a kid. But the kids with the consoles can't program it out of the box. It think it's a real shame.
I'd wager a bet (Score:5, Insightful)
But to keep the few people who don't post but instead mod from bashing me with "offtopic" down into the sewer, my first computer was an Atari 800XL. And I STILL say its graphics was way ahead of anything commodore put into its 64!
. o O (Great. Now you get modded down for flamebaiting...)
Re:You made me a programmer (Score:5, Insightful)
I was depressed by how many of the people in the article listed an IBM PC as their first computer. There was a magic about the early 8-bit micros that captured the imagination, and that was just completely missing on the PC. I, too, was brought up with the joys of wobbly RAM packs, dead flesh keyboards, and progressed up through the C64 and onto the Amiga before finally migrating to a PC compatible in the mid '90s. People that only had access to a PC have no idea about what they were missing.
READY. (Score:5, Insightful)
Although my first actual, purchased system was too 'modern' to have a native command interpreter mode, I spent a lot of hours in the Apple II BASIC mode and will always have a soft spot for it (and will probably also never be fully comfortable with BASIC that doesn't begin each line with a number).
You don't -- or at least, I don't -- get that same 'blank page' feeling on turning on a modern desktop'ed system. Especially on my office Windows machine, where it always seems as though the hard drive is churning and clicking, for no particular reason. It's irrational, but it gives me the impression I don't have the computer's full and complete attention, and damnit -- I want that. (Besides which, it's distracting.)
I still do a lot of personal correspondance on an IBM Selectric II typewriter. Actual, physical paper letters. (Yes, the Post Office does still do things besides eBay shipments and junk mail.) If I had to pin down the one thing that keeps me coming back to the Selectric, it's the "user experience" you get when you switch it on. You sit down, you take off the cover, you insert a piece of paper. You turn the switch "On." There's a nice heavy clunking sound, the carriage twitches a bit, and then there's nothing but a low humming, and sometimes a faint whiff of ozone. If you put your hand against it, you can feel a slight vibration. And then it does nothing else, except wait for you to do something. That's its equivalent of "READY."
As much as I appreciate a good preemptively-multitasking OS and the ability to schedule things with my crontab and otherwise have the computer just 'deal with things' for me, I can't deny that there's something reassuring from time to time about using a machine that doesn't try to out-think you.
Re:You made me a programmer (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you've hit the nail on the head with this. For me, the thing that seems to most keenly illustrate this difference in attitudes for is the manual that shipped with my first computer (a Vic-20). A few pages in, I distinctly remember reading
(I may not have the phrasing exactly right, but that's the gist of it, including the elephant reference.)
Nowadays most people seem positively afraid of computers, an attitude that's certainly not discouraged by the big-name software vendors. People aren't likely to get into tinkering with computers and using them to design cool stuff so long as they regard them with a mindset usually reserved for unexploded ordnance -- as if the slightest false move will cause the thing to blow up in your lap.