Hate to break it to you... You are not the youngest anymore, haha. But still young in mind!

I loved that magazine and I even typed one of the ZX81 games into a reply here the other week on another of Kari's videos. Many of those issues I still vividly remember, after revisiting them the other night. They kinda remind me of Sinclair User but aimed more at young kids starting out, as I was in the early 80s. My first experience was with the NASCOM if you remember that home soldered computer kit. Things got a whole lot easier once the ZX Spectrum hit the scene.

It is always interesting to see the younger generation consider the tech from the 80's worth exploring. She did a great job in the video and I certainly think that deserves kudos. If you make more, I'll watch. And of course I will continue to tune in to @ExplainingComputers as always.

*do

I started with the Vic 20 in the 80s, it had 3.5K of RAM, it didn't stop people making excellent games for it, including chess, that was also hard to beat. I'm now a C++ software engineer, I have made a career out of programming 👍

50, and I’m about to play this to my seven year old: “This is how dad did computers a few…errr…a while back!” Absolutely top content.

I agree even I play Commodore league back then.

Agreed. 55. Taught myself 6502 and wrote games without an assembler! (VIC/64) It changes the way you think. It also goes hand in hand with digital electronics.

I did this when I was in middle school. But it was already deprecated. Bought a Tandy color comp from amity and my library had ass old books in it for the comp lol

I have a few years on you - I was doing my computer science degree at about this time. We learned how things worked, not just how to be a OOD/C++ software engineer, like today. I feel privileged to have had the education I had.

I had the acorn electron, c64 then Amiga. Those were the days.

I followed, the same path. Now 52. Although I had seen and used a few machines at fairs and school. The Zx81 was my neighbors. His parents, worked for the local Hardware store, which he now runs. I used to work there after school from 10 to 15. I came back and worked from them when I was 34. As the computer support person. (I also ended up being press ganged into analyzing, their internal systems). Self-taught and my peers were some of the best in the field back then in my country. I from there ran my own company, providing technical and development support. :) Always love to here the path traveled and hopes and ambitions for the future. I am off too teach ICT again at a Mental Health organisation, if all goes as planned in the next two weeks.

Same here... will be 56 this year and recall the listings from all the magazines and books in those days. I've been a software engineer, teacher, researcher and it all stems from that magic 1981-85 period.

go why you all cry the same age here ?

@@lucasrem Your comment makes no sense, you should delete it.

then later hacking it

The worst were the ones that made you type in huge arrays of hex digits so it could run parts of the program in machine code. If you made a mistake and typed an 'F8' instead of an 'FB' the program was likely to crash and you would lose everything unless you had remembered to save to tape.

Did it for fun as a kid and now I get paid to do it.

I remember getting the error message "TYPE MISMATCH AT LINE 80", so I typed "MISMATCH" into line 80 and it still didn't work! Reader, I rage quit.

I remember doing one which was 4 pages long and got an error at the end.. the following month in the magazine they apologized as they printed a mistake so got it working in the end 😂

Same tactics used on Atari 2600 boxes 😁

Nothing hilarious about it - we didn't see bad graphics back then, we saw an aid to our imagination

Yep! Like the artwork on Atari 2600 box versus what the actual game looked like. Luckily, Activision moved away from this practice and actually showed the game graphics on the back (as well as the name of the programmer which was the reason the founders of Activision left Atari in the first place: no recognition for their hard work).

@@JustWasted3HoursHere Yeah! I remember when I seen the box for Keystone Kapers... I knew I wanted the game based on the box alone 🙂

@@JohnnyWednesdaySo true! It's all relative. I remember being blown away by Pitfall's graphics. So simple in comparison to graphics of today, but at the time it was amazing. Later, I realized the ACTUAL impressive thing about that game is how David Crane was able to squeeze over 200 unique screens into only 4K of ROM space. The way he did it is quite genius. Here he is talking about this very clever trick: ukposts.info/have/v-deo/hXKFZYWCbYxyqok.htmlsi=aGV5h8O2Rpf_0Pdp&t=1332 (The whole lecture is quite interesting though).

What's the word for feeling nostalgia for times you haven't lived? This is how I feel from reading your comment.

"Then one day my dad brought home a ZX81. I remember thinking this was truly groundbreaking because up untill this point anything on a screen had been completely locked." Exactly the same happened to me. Same experience.

My first programming languages were FORTRAN and COMPASS for a CDC 3200. Google "CDC 3200 Monash" for the sort of thing. Ours was up about the 12th floor of the tallest building in Perth..

@@0L1 "Pseudo-Nostalgia" perhaps? Sounds like a good 8-bit game title/plot though as it sounds silly enough to be one like "Rockstar ate my hamster", "Ninja Scooter Simulator", "How to be a complete bastard". :D

My dad took me to an industry fair in germany when I was very young. Had my first encounter with a computer there. Had no idea what a computer was back then, those were brand new. There was a screen and a keyboard, and I said "look dad, you can type on a TV". I went there and entered my name, then pressed return. Some kind of interpreter must have interpreted it as a variable or command name, and it gave an error message "?bad name". I was shocked. One or two years later, our school got its first computer (a Commodore PET), where I started to learn programming in Basic, and later 6502 assembly.

I'm 43 too and my dad did the same I was about 4 too but he didn't like the keyboard to the point that after seeing my cousins c64 he saved up to get one of those instead

47 here and the ZX 128k was my first computer. Freddie Hardest was amazing!

Stuff you guys with your 128k, my first Speccy was when I was nine and it was a 16k. Best day of my childhood was when my mum surprised me with a ram pack so I could play 48k games!

My first speccy was the 48+ but the keyboard was not as good as the original and then I got a 128+2 with the awful built in cassette deck which failed so many times, why didn't Amstrad fit a external mic in/out attachment, would have saved them alot of money on repairs.

I absolutely love the ending of your input, "I'm a software engineer now, so it must have made quite the impact" and that is EXACTLY what every one of those companies and medias were going for, to inspire you to take it further! (Okay, we can definitely argue about "every one" of those companies lmao)

I’m a software engineer and same. Though I got my hands on them about 10 years after their prime it was still my introduction to programming. Its a shame we’ve moved so far away from educating people on how to program/use computers

Which engine(s) are you/ have you worked on? If I may ask.

How did you become a game engine developer? I'm currently applying to college, and I'm interested in game engines (among other things) but not game dev itself. I would like to know if you can get such a job from a pure cs background.

​​​@@spyrgelispyyDifferent game engine developer here, but to answer your question - I have a computer engineering degree. CS is also fine, but a bit more knowledge about hardware helps. I always put more focus on personal projects & research vs degrees when interviewing people. (I also grew up in the 80s and spent many hours with my dad's help entering in code for games on my C64 from Byte magazine.)

I have the complete collection of those in folders. Bought from a car boot sale many years ago.

Oh man, "input", "Compute!" and "Compute Gazette", "Info 64" (later just "info") and so many more. Type in games, reviews of games, upcoming software and hardware. Good times!

Oh, man. There was a helicopter game in one of those magazines I'm still trying to find. You'd fly around in a chopper and shoot blocks to make your way out, a la "Breakout." To this day, I can't remember the name of the game or the magazine. Thanks for the reminder about "Input."

Got mine. Still remember an article predicting the Internet and accessing the computer to find the bus schedule or buy movie tickets...

why you all cry the same age here ?

Same here! And quite often the error wasn't made while typing, but was caused by an actually error as printed in the magazine. Of course you wouldn't know that until you'd spent literally hours meticulously going through everything. Then once your realized there was a typo in the mag, you'd have to wait a month for the next issue to come out, keeping fingers crossed that they'd figured it out and print a correction (and that the mag hadn't sold out or gone out of business). Quite a few games were never fixed, so the time was simply wasted. One such game I remember with particular dread was called "Grab des Pharaohs" (Tomb of the pharaoh) from the German magazine C64er (at least that's how I remember the name) - this game was in many, many, MANY parts, taking up tens of pages each issue, and the end result was supposed to be a game where you entered a pyramid on an exciting adventure... In reality, the listings were full of typos, so each month came with a few corrections, but in the end, it still didn't work properly and was never fixed! Oh, the days!

...and you would find that you had more fun debugging the code than actually playing the game. It was a game within a game.

Those errors where Vincent Price would be heard laughing in the background!

yeah same here. Book club! :D

Book club here, too! Scholastic was the company involved, I think.

@@paul_boddie yes i think thats the one!

If then for loops, sinclair was the most crab basic machine only. why you never got that better Acorn Electron, why the sinclair crab ? Need UK only ?

Great to use with emulators too.

Coding is dark magic to us code monkeys too, especially in assembly language

Same on the Spectrum.. machine code programs printed out as Hex values, and you would type the whole lot into a Basic program called a Hex loader, then save it to tape.. and hopefully it worked !

My mom, recognizing a bargain, used to help me do the same. She would narrate the hex while I typed. Only person who I know whose mom would read him hexadecimal. 😂

@@markasiala6355 Haha! That's awesome. I was only allowed 45 minutes a day with my computer, after which I had to unplug it from the TV and put it in my room. I would wait until they think I am sleeping and then I would type the hex codes blind into the editor, using the movement of the tape drive to confirm entries xD

@@karilawler lol, you're welcome!

Was that last one Death Valley?

@@wisteelaThat name rings a bell, yeah.

@@karilawler fabulous 🤩. Then enjoy the journey as much as I do..🙏✌️☮️🕊️