So who's the new old guy?

[oldguy]

Hi, I'm from 1967. So today I am 55. I live in Bruges, Belgium.
My father was an electronics teacher and in the early years of computers, he had a huge interest in these "things". So the first computer came along at the end of 1979. I was 12 years old at the time. It was a Tandy TRS-80 model 1.
My LEGO blocks were put aside and from then on I programmed BASIC. After the TRS-80 Model 1 it became a Model 3 and finally a Model 4.
After the TRS-80 came the MS-DOS PC with GWBASIC, QuickBASIC and Visual Basic (for Windows). I also learned machine language on the Z-80 (TRS-80) and the 80x86 on the XT and AT PC's.
Meanwhile, I no longer program.
Early 2022 I discovered QB64 and program a bit as a hobby.

Hi, I also did some assembly language programming as well.  I did Z-80 for fun, on a very early microcomputer.  It had an RS-232 interface, so you could hook up an ASCII terminal.  We had this lying around the EE Department at the University of Delaware.  I think the manufacturer was Zilog.  At IBM I worked on the Xenix kernel, which we licensed from Microsoft.  Parts of the kernel were written in Intel 286 assembly language.

[JuanjoGomez]

Hi. I'm from Spain, and I was born in 1960. (Today 62).

My first exposure to programming was in pharmacy school with Fortran and punch cards. Then I learned basic programming with the ZX Spectrum and a colleague from university taught me assembler. From there I went to GWBasic, then to QuickBasic, and since I discovered Qb64 I have adapted all my programs to it, and I am delighted.

[oldguy]

It seems like most Basic compilers today are free, except for Liberty Basic and Power Basic. I think this is a trend in the software business today. I was shocked when I saw MS had released C# and I guess a lot of .net as open source.

[Pete]

MS gave away a lot of copies of .net 10+ years ago. I got a download. I use it as a planter. That might come in handy when all that MS money Gates came by is used to buy up even more farm land, and we have to listen to all the oligarchs tell us to eat bugs.

Pete

[bert22306]

Hola. Soy de España, y nací en 1960. (hoy 62).
Mi primer contacto con la programación fue en la escuela de farmacia con Fortran y tarjetas perforadas. Luego aprendí a programar básico con el ZX Spectrum y un colega de la universidad me enseñó ensamble. De ahí pasé a GWBasic, luego a QuickBasic, y desde que descubrí Qb64 he adaptado todos mis programas a él, y estoy encantado.

Similar to my story. Looks like many "of a certain age" started out with Fortran, and then Basic replaced Fortran in our lives. We used Fortran in college, on an IBM 1130 small mainframe, with punch cards. A whopping 8K of "core" RAM as I recall. The nice thing with the 1130 was that we students could run it ourselves, without having to turn in the card deck and come back later, as on the IBM 360 and 370.

Then in grad school, we remoted into some Burroughs mainframe off campus, and it used Basic. That's why I had to learn at least the basics of Basic. Then in my first real job after school, we actually remoted into that same mainframe, and still used Basic. And then at that same job, but at a remote site, came that nifty little HP 9830a, with the not so nifty HP Basic. Weird Basic, where variable names consisted of one letter and one number. One nice thing, it could do matrix math natively. And it was more or less a desktop PC. Cassette deck to store programs.

Then came IBM PCs, with built-in Advanced Basic, and soon QBasic, when DOS 5.0 came out. Then after that, in the Windows era, no more built-in QBasic, I found a nice QuickBasic 7.1 at some German software site, so I could keep using Basic, when others had moved to Pascal and such. Then with 64-bit CPUs, stubbornly stuck with QuickBasic, but had to run that over DosBox (which was okay but took a performance hit). Look for a better way, use my trusty search engine, came across QB64. Yay! Almost all my programs ran straight out of the box. Only a couple had minor fixable glitches, where I was taking some liberties before that QB64 nixed.

So aside from the really old programs that I didn't use anymore, I didn't even need to "adaptado todos mis programas." Although I did improve text and graphics display, with wide screen and more pixels allowable with QB64.

[Kernelpanic]

MS gave away a lot of copies of .net 10+ years ago. I got a download. I use it as a planter. That might come in handy when all that MS money Gates came by is used to buy up even more farm land, and we have to listen to all the oligarchs tell us to eat bugs.

Pete

Well, unlike that narcissist Steve Jobs, Billy Boy has put a large part of his asset into a foundation. One should acknowledge that.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

[Pete]

Think past what you wrote for a minute. You know who else has a foundation? The Clinton's. Think that money raised is for "good?"

Same with Gates. Pushing vaccines, buying up farms, one world order... Still think it's for "good." It isn't. The only think that beats being rich is being rich and in control. American Oligarchy. Similar to the days of the Robber Barons, but this time with a run-away communist twist, instead of a run-away capital twist. Oh well, humanity always seeks homeostasis, but that's only because we reach limits of tolerance in radical directions.

Pete

[mnrvovrfc]

It seems like most Basic compilers today are free, except for Liberty Basic and Power Basic.  I think this is a trend in the software business today.  I was shocked when I saw MS had released C# and I guess a lot of .net as open source.

There are a few others which are payware like Purebasic (which I made the mistake of purchasing many years back), True Basic, Xojo. True Basic was created by the guys who originally created the BASIC programming language.
The M$ releasing into open source might be because they want to pull attention to their version of Linux. If not, it's their sudden realization (might be true for other multinational companies) that a lot of people are still stuck with code that used to run well on 32-bit systems.

[oldguy]

MS gave away a lot of copies of .net 10+ years ago. I got a download. I use it as a planter. That might come in handy when all that MS money Gates came by is used to buy up even more farm land, and we have to listen to all the oligarchs tell us to eat bugs.

Pete

I’m trying to figure out how this BB works. Where will this post show up? Lol

[oldguy]

Hola. Soy de España, y nací en 1960. (hoy 62).
Mi primer contacto con la programación fue en la escuela de farmacia con Fortran y tarjetas perforadas. Luego aprendí a programar básico con el ZX Spectrum y un colega de la universidad me enseñó ensamble. De ahí pasé a GWBasic, luego a QuickBasic, y desde que descubrí Qb64 he adaptado todos mis programas a él, y estoy encantado.

I too am thrilled with QB64. Now that I’m retired I’d like to do some programming projects just for me, something I’d find fun!