Comment on I Love Reading 1980s Computer Magazines, and So Should You
dhork@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I got the magazines that came with BASIC programs printed in them, you could pay extra to get a subscription that included a tape with the code so you didn’t have to type the whole thing in and risk typos.
That early foray into BASIC was essential for my early involvement in technology, in spite of what Dijkstra said that one time…
palordrolap@fedia.io 1 week ago
I was given a bunch of old Compute!'s Gazettes by an uncle who'd moved onto PCs from his Commodore 64. I did not get the benefit of the tape or disk option unfortunately, but as a result many of those magazines are bedaubed with felt-tip where I marked my progress whiling away hours typing in those programs.
I learned so much about the Commodore 64 from those magazines.
By the time I got my C64C in the '90s, magazines had long since stopped publishing code listings due to cost. If they'd continued to do so, magazines would have been twice the price and they wouldn't have been able to sell twice as many to make up for it. As it was, the magazines were, by that point, at least partially subsidised by game companies who wanted to get a demo out on the tape or disk.
I'm still annoyed my subscription to one of those magazines ran out the month before the last ever issue. I could probably get one on eBay for a reasonable price, but it's the principle, dammit.
irmadlad@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I got into computers in the mid 70s with the advent of the Altair. Reading your comment was like a flashback. I remember you’d finally get through, meticulously typing in all the pages of code. So your cross your fingers and ran it and got an error. But I was hooked. I still have my Altair, Timex/Sinclair, Ti 99 & 994a. I had/have everything imaginable for the Ti. You needed a kitchen table to spread all that out on.
Later on, as you say, demos became a big thing, I loved the demos. I would write just about anyone giving away a demo of something. Game demos would at least let you play one or two levels.
palordrolap@fedia.io 6 days ago
And eventually we learned to understand the programs we were typing in, knowing what those errors meant and how to fix them without looking back at the listing. Magical.