How I Learned to Program and the Old Blue Binder of Programming

From BASIC to Xojo and more

I first became aware of programming as a thing in 1982 or so when one of my Dad’s friends brought over his Atari 800. At some point in 1983 we got our own Atari 400 with Atari BASIC.

I started off by typing in programs from Atari computer magazine BASIC program listings and then tried changing the code to get a feel for how things worked.

I then moved on to learning from books. One of my favorites was Dr. C. Wacko's miracle guide to designing and programming your own Atari computer arcade games. I now have my own copy of this book that I picked up in a recent Atari book haul.

During this time I also wrote BASIC programs on paper, mostly because I wasn't always allowed to use the computer (since it was hooked up to our only TV at the time). Plus, I didn't have a way to actually save programs I wrote (a tape drive would come later), so I had to write them down to “save” them.

I have a binder of stuff from this time period and it's full of programs I wrote (hand-written and printouts) and even has a rejection letter I got for the first program I submitted to a magazine!¹

My Old Blue Binder of Programming

Some of the stuff in the OBBoP

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