Here's a story for all of you:
Spoiler
When I was 12, my father bought me my first computer against my mother's wishes. She punished me by not allowing me to buy ANY program for it (my father agreed to this because he didn't know what a computer program was). So, I was relegated to booting it up and looking at this screen for an hour:
It came with a book on BASIC. I tried to read it, but it wasn't very 'kid' friendly. But over the course of a week, I was able to type in a program at the back of the book which made a very blocky man dance "mr. bojangles". After taking 2 days of typing in code I didn't understand, I ran it and recieved an error message. It was obtuse, and debugging took me nearly twice as long as it did to type! During this time, my mother kept telling me if I quit, she would buy me 2 Atari 2600 games. If I quit, she would return the computer and give me the money. IF I QUIT. No way. I now had an obsession of seeing this bastard dance. After 1 week of starting to type in the code, I got to see him dance - and my relationship with my mother has been strained ever since. BUT - I got to see him dance! Now, that I understood a little, I began to try to make games. Over the next 2 1/2 years I must have made nearly 50 games, mostly buggy and broken, but some I will never forget. (A D&D rogue-type of game, A text adventure, a graphical choose your own adventure starring The Hulk, a 3 part mini-game based on Track & Field, and my favorite: Gary Graveyard - a side shooter, man vs ghosts) This was the beginning of my time. When the 90s came up, I was attempting to use Borland C to create an RLE .PCX compression method which could be injected directly into a bit-blitter. Why? Because I wanted to animate sprites at a resolution higher than 64px by 64px without shearing, tearing, or creating artifacts. I never finished. Life got in the way. Illness got in the way. My time ended too soon. But I never ever ever would have reached this point if it wasn't for my mother, that computer, or BASIC. I miss my time, because every possibility was open - learning languages became easy.
What can you take away from this?...
NEVER GIVE UP.
NEVER LET THOSE AROUND YOU TRY TO STOP YOU.
TAME THE BEAST - THE MACHINE - BEND IT TO YOUR WILL -
Because this is your time. Take it by the balls while you have your chance!
And above all - make that bastard dance!
It came with a book on BASIC. I tried to read it, but it wasn't very 'kid' friendly. But over the course of a week, I was able to type in a program at the back of the book which made a very blocky man dance "mr. bojangles". After taking 2 days of typing in code I didn't understand, I ran it and recieved an error message. It was obtuse, and debugging took me nearly twice as long as it did to type! During this time, my mother kept telling me if I quit, she would buy me 2 Atari 2600 games. If I quit, she would return the computer and give me the money. IF I QUIT. No way. I now had an obsession of seeing this bastard dance. After 1 week of starting to type in the code, I got to see him dance - and my relationship with my mother has been strained ever since. BUT - I got to see him dance! Now, that I understood a little, I began to try to make games. Over the next 2 1/2 years I must have made nearly 50 games, mostly buggy and broken, but some I will never forget. (A D&D rogue-type of game, A text adventure, a graphical choose your own adventure starring The Hulk, a 3 part mini-game based on Track & Field, and my favorite: Gary Graveyard - a side shooter, man vs ghosts) This was the beginning of my time. When the 90s came up, I was attempting to use Borland C to create an RLE .PCX compression method which could be injected directly into a bit-blitter. Why? Because I wanted to animate sprites at a resolution higher than 64px by 64px without shearing, tearing, or creating artifacts. I never finished. Life got in the way. Illness got in the way. My time ended too soon. But I never ever ever would have reached this point if it wasn't for my mother, that computer, or BASIC. I miss my time, because every possibility was open - learning languages became easy.
What can you take away from this?...
NEVER GIVE UP.
NEVER LET THOSE AROUND YOU TRY TO STOP YOU.
TAME THE BEAST - THE MACHINE - BEND IT TO YOUR WILL -
Because this is your time. Take it by the balls while you have your chance!
And above all - make that bastard dance!