WEBSITE CODING

Learning how to code a computer, for me was founded when I was about 6 years old. My parents purchased an Amstrad CPC464 in the early '80's which was bought for my two older brothers. In time one of my brothers found how to make a simple program that just repeated its self to produce the a text string on the screen that repeated its self over and over, as a small child I watched his interest and knowledge grow until he could change screen modes and text colours and the like - which in the time was pretty cool stuff. (remember that in in early 1983 few of us were lucky enough to own a Atari TV game unit which featured a simple blob and block to sort of resemble tennis (??) so colours were new and exciting stuff!)

One day I walked into my brother bedroom and noticed that as he typed, the computer was automatically adding the line numbers to his code. As a small child I remember asking him how to make it 'add up' to which he told me to go away and leave him alone.

I am sure you know how it was. Brother goes out, I go in his room and play with his toys - or computer!

One afternoon while he was away, I was sat just messing on, typing random things into the command prompt when I noticed the game Joystick on the shelf above me. On the front it had a small switch for the autofire mode which was labelled 'auto'. In a strange thought I typed 'auto' into the command prompt and voila!! the computer added line number after line number each time I pressed the enter button. This was the beginning of my interest in computers - I commanded and it did!

From this my interest grew. In the 1990's I was bought an Amiga500 - which at the time was a real gem of a computer with a full 1MB of RAM and games that were truly arcade like in quality. For me, although I loved the games I also loved the programmability that the system offered. I soon acquired a program called AMOS - a full 3D capable programming system that would allow the user to make almost any type of coding and program.

I eventually reached a stage that I could program a simple utility and seemed to focus on copy protection and such like - I think influenced by the easily available pirate software that was around at the time. I would make programs that looked like 'workbench' (pre-microsoft windows) but were actually clones that hinder access to any file without the proper password. I found out how to produce a moving landscape by simple copper instructions (again, Amiga chip specific) that would depict movement along a road or mountain and key input manipulation.

The PC with Windows was released in x286 form in the 90's and I had started work at a mechanical engineering company. I would finish work and sit in front of my Amiga and think to myself, 'what's the point as no one ever appreciates my programs', I just stopped messing around with code - overnight.