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My original foray into the world of computers and programming

Updated: May 20


My dad bought me a personal computer called the ZX81 when it was first launched, when I was a teenager. I had no idea what a computer was but I was hooked from the beginning. This was black & white only computer with 1KB (!) of RAM.


Soon after, the BBC Micro was launched and I begged my dad to buy a 'model-B' with its, at the time, whopping 32KB of user RAM. In those days, kids used to write programs themselves, as well as play purchased games. In those days, when you bought a computer, it would come loaded with a language called Basic, and you could start programming right away - it was real easy. Like a lot of other kids those days, I used to love writing games. However, Basic was an interpreted language and given the power of microprocessors in those days, anything requiring fancy sprite movements and lot of computation required you to delve into machine code and assembly language. However, studies soon became priority, and programming disappeared from my life.


Move forward a few decades, you can pretty much get any application you need from the internet. However, I wanted to experience again the joys of writing simple programs. Imagine my surprise on finding that modern 'personal' computers do not come pre-packaged with a programming language. And the plethora of languages available!


I eventually chose Javascript as the main language of choice. I also wanted an easy environment to write code and run it immediately like when I was a teenager. I chose CodePen for that. I also wanted to be able to write simple games and graphics demos. So I chose to use something called the Phaser 3 games framework which has all sorts useful stuff like functions for manipulating sprites.

I'll post my attempts at programming, mainly for the purposes of recording and remember what I learn. But comments would of course be welcome!





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