I learnt to code in 1984 on my MSX which came with Microsoft MSX Basic.
We had the computer because my grandpa was into tech and bought new computers all the time. He gave my parents the computer and because my room was the only one with a bit of space, it came to sit on my desk. We had a couple of games for it on cartridge, but they were kinda lame.
One day by accident I stumbled upon the MSX Basic interface and didn’t know what I was looking at. I asked my dad and he didn’t really know anything about it, but remembered my grandpa also gave us a book with the computer. The book was about learning Basic and because computers were a new thing at the time, it was written in a way that made it easy to understand. I asked my dad what you could actually do with Basic, he didn’t know but it had something to do with telling the computer what it should do. So I said: “Could you create games with it?” He said: “Sure, I guess?”.
My little goblin mind freaked out, something that would allow new games! The games we had were lame so I really wanted new games. So I spent thousands of hours learning everything I could about that machine, Basic and coding in general. My grandpa gave me lots of books and I learned all the hardware and the assembly etc. I made a lot of games over the years, some good, most bad and made my siblings play them. We still remember some of them and joke about it. Especially because one of my brothers specialized in finding ways to cheat and exploit my games, which was tons of fun.
Later in life I studied to become an Embedded System Engineer because I really like the low-level programming side and the hardware aspect. Also the gaming industry sucks to work in, so I’ll pass on that. Maybe some day I’ll create another game as a passion project, but life gets in the way at the moment.
I still have .BAS files floating around I wrote in QuickBASIC. I have no idea why.
Some where actually useful - like a program that read files (mainly meant for things like executables) and extracted plain text from it. Handy for finding text in files you couldn’t readily open in anything else.
Another renamed files with various switches like title case, or padding numbers with zeros. Was handy for renaming MP3 files for example. Actually they were probably S3M modules back then heh…
The most fun thing I did with it was to write a “war dialer” inspired by the 1983 movie “War Games”.
It had a “graphical” screen where one could enter a telephone area code, an exchange, and starting and ending numbers, then it would command the modem to dial each number in sequence.
It would log the call results as “no answer”, “busy”, “voice”, or “data”.
I remember changing values in gorillas.bas as a kid to make the bananas go faster or slower or changing the sky from blue to red. I thought I was a little hacker man for sure.
QBasic kinda fucked me later in life though when I had to basically unlearn all the shit programming techniques I picked up on it when learning C++.
Yeah mine does it too, but the scream is so quiet compared to how wide his mouth is… It looks like he should be screaming a lot louder but it’s just this little squeak
Ah memories! I wrote the project for my GCSE computer studies on this. I also wrote my friends project for 20 quid since our teacher was rubbish and hadn’t actually taught anyone to program. Most of the other kids figured it out, but my friend was clueless and didn’t want to completely fail the subject.
Ditto. I had the option of taking a comp sci class in grade 11/12 which taught QBasic back in 2001/2002. Still got all the basic bitch programs I made for the class on a hard drive somewhere lol.
I can recommend a Emmy-nominated documentary called “City 40” which covers the context and legacies pretty well. It’s an eye opener, and makes you wonder what tomfuckery we don’t even know about.
Seems like if you read between the lines, there's a certain commonality in increased respiration/alertness, stress response and showing of teeth that solves a common need across species. When a subject recognizes a lack of alertness, a present threat or the need for aggressive action in the near future, a yawn can help prepare for that while also giving pause to those who might be threats and/or potentially paralyzing prey. The failure in consensus here appears, to me, an inability to describe those seemingly disparate needs as related to the physiology that drives them. Not a lack of understanding, so much as a deficiency in perlocution.
Ay yo so I was bout to tell you how that’s all wrong, but then you go throwin out words like “perlocution” and now I realize you probly know what the fuck is up, so I’m just gonna trust.
Yes, but can you catch a yawn from someone else? That’s the claim about autism, that someone else yawning does not tend to make people on the spectrum yawn. I have no idea whether or not that is true.
It’s absolute bollocks, I’m autistic and I’ve always had to curse out co workers for making me yawn or cough after they do. First I’ve ever heard of this claim.
Reading this post actually made me yawn too! Just by even thinking of it. I have never actually even thought about it I’m depth until your post, it’s just a totally natural reaction to me.
As someone with asthma and lowered ability to cycle out CO2, yawning has always helped me restore the “full” feeling and your comment just made everything snap into place.
The primary driver of suffocation panic, pain, and feeling of air starvation isn’t the lack of oxygen but CO2 buildup. It makes sense that yawning on command could then help alleviate the symptoms of CO2 buildup in asthma sufferers.
Might be a group protection mechanism to indicate low oxigen in crammed spaces qith many individuals. In addition to that could be a geoup trigger for rest.
I always thought it was due to clearing the lungs out or to regulate them but then I saw a turtle yawn under water. I then thought it’s ancestors wouldn’t have been swimmers so maybe it’s instinctive still, but then it would need a mechanism to prevent water inhalation. So why retain the yawn.
Perhaps as you say it’s more about visual communication to others around you.
It seems most sensible to me that it serves a bunch of uses: clearing the lungs, alerting yourself and others that you’re tired and probably need someone else to take over, social bonding, spooking predators…
en.wikipedia.org
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