The 640K thing precipitated the first program I ever wrote. If you can call it that.
I had a bunch of games I wanted to play in the early/mid 1990s, including Wing Commander. Each one seemed to require it's own config.sys/autoexec.bat, so I wrote a menu type thing to choose the game and do the appropriate setup.
The experience made me think about what else I could do by joining a few commands together. I wish the internet had been available to me then, because I would have made much faster progress if something like stackoverflow had existed.
Couldn't agree more. I try not to think about it but if I'd have had the resources available to me back then that I have now, I would be orders of magnitude better.
I built my first computer about 17 years ago but dial up was still a thing and I was discouraged from spending time on it so I just did html in the 30 minutes per day I was allowed. If I'd have found a REPL back then, I probably wouldn't feel so inadequate when discussing concepts with my friends at the big 4! It'll work out fine, but later than planned; the spectre of unemployability will start looming in a decade or so, which certainly motivates me!
I had a bunch of games I wanted to play in the early/mid 1990s, including Wing Commander. Each one seemed to require it's own config.sys/autoexec.bat, so I wrote a menu type thing to choose the game and do the appropriate setup.
The experience made me think about what else I could do by joining a few commands together. I wish the internet had been available to me then, because I would have made much faster progress if something like stackoverflow had existed.