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Ask HN: What's that first software you made that just hooked you with coding?

4 points by Arshdeep ↗ HN
For me it was that snake game i made in C when i got my first computer. It was one pixel headless never ending snake with speed adjustment, made it with GD library. Probably the worst logic ever to make a snake game. But boy i was amazed that really I MADE A WORKING GAME ! My little bro played it, friends played it and absolutely loved it. After that i never thought i could be anything but a programmer.

So what was your first software that just got you ?

Shally

7 comments

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troymc
My first computer was a TRS-80. I remember copying some random-maze-generating code out of a magazine from Radio Shack. I didn't understand how it worked but I remember there were lots of POKE statements (to write directly to memory using BASIC). It got me very excited with what was possible, an excitement I still have today.
Dnguyen
My first home computer was an Amstrad 64, I was using an apple at school. My sister and I checked out a book from our library and started typing in all these BASIC instruction. Yes, a whole thick book was the listing of the source code for Roland in the Cave. After weeks of typing and then a couple more weeks of bug fixing (spelling correction), we had a little guy hopping around in a cave with flying pterodactyl and creepy, blinking eyes. I still think about that game once in a while.
DanielGeisler
In 1980 I wrote a program to take horizontal and vertical seismic waveforms and plot them in different 3-D perspectives on a Gould plotter connected to an IMB 360. But let's be honest here, like most serious programmers the nature of the first program I wrote was irrelevant. It was glorious just to write software of any type in any language running on any machine! Hooked on my first byte.
DanielGeisler
Dang, I answered too quick. In 1978 I bought a TI-57 and wrote software to study tetration or iterated exponentiation. This was something that necessitated a computer. Soon I began to realize that I was looking at an example of chaos. I now have a web site at http://www.tetration.org with fractals and all documenting my research on tetration.
jester5
I was a late bloomer and did not start programming until 28 yrs which was through my degree program in BS Software Engineering. I had taken js. java, sql and really did not fully enjoy it. It was not until I had taken VB.net in my senior year where I changed. I had a project that I was working on that performed financial calculations. One day I started a new version of the application and literally started at 7:00am and did not eat or move until 8:00pm that night.(I think I went to the restroom and drank water, can't remember) I had code high and ever since then I have been in love with programming now I'm 34 and a .Net Developer for a mid-siz company.
thejteam
A TIC TAC TOE game in GWBASIC. I figured out how to make it never lose.(I was 10-11, so this was a big deal). My parents thought the game cheated somehow.