The first computer I taught myself to code for ... TRS-80 BASIC ... then I moved onto 6809E assembly coding for it (super fasts ... relatively speaking). It's where my career started as I made it official with CS degree at CSUH. Today we have layers and layers of abstraction in the name of security to slow everything down and kill the fun.

Coding was definitely more fun in the 80's ... yeah, imagination was a requirement (that's supposed to be an airport) ... at age 16 I was hooked :)

I almost got, or rather my parents almost got me, a TRS-80 in 1983. I ended up going with the Commodore 64.

I learned BASIC and wrote a few useful programs, and even made a simple game.

My how things have progressed since then.

Dave

I started out with one of these in 1980
System 80/Video Genie/PMC80, which was a copy of the TRS80 (limited in supply and had a vast mark up on the US price where I lived at the time)
System 80 Video Genie

Annoyed with the slow loading times from cassette I hooked up one of these Stringy Floppy and increased the memory to 48k by stacking additional RAM chips on top.
I moved on to owning an Apple ][, C64, Amiga 1000 w/Sidecar,Apple MAC before building my own PCs (still do).

14 hours ago, c912039 said:

Amiga 1000 w/Sidecar

Built-In cassette to load programs, fancy ... mine was external.

I eventually moved to SS floppy 5.25" drive. I had upgraded from 32KB to 64KB ... also replaced the square spaced keyboard keys with the newer keyboard from the Color Computer 2. Picked up a spectrum analyzer cartridge for it, had so much fun. Then it was time for 300 baud modem/coupler and searching for BBS phone numbers to connect (free and they don't require all my personal data) ... and finally CompuServe (not free).

Being a young sprog I couldn't afford the Model 1, once at university I didn't use my TRS80 CC much as I was in CS lab using the schools terminals ... it was a good few years before I was to able to afford my next home computer (I had used Apple Macintosh at BofA and Intel 286 at another software company). 386SX from Packard Bell was my next jump to home computer. From that point onwards I started building my own PCs and getting CPUs/Motherboards/RAM etc. as soon as they came out (frequent trips silicon valley, NCA Peripherals, Fry's, Central Computer in downtown SF and many small computer shops).

A trip down memory lane, they were good times and innovation and performance improvements were rapid, very rapid. Had to know more about IRQ and I/O address settings until about mid 1990's when we finally got P-n-P ISA expansion cards. I've enjoyed seeing and being a part of the progression over the decades.

My first Voodoo 1 GPU (top tier and revolutionary) from 1996 cost me $299 ... which is about $630 in today's money ... compare that to today's top tier nVidia GPU at $18,000 (RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell).

Edited 23 hours ago23 hr by SayAgain