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The first computer I used was a TRS-80 back in grade school. They had a dozen of them at the local science center where I took classes after school. I learned to program in BASIC and store my inventions on a cassette tape.


The first machine I owned was an Apple IIe. I remember my neighbor was jealous because, unlike his Apple II, my computer could handle lower case letters :-) Fancy! I learned to do basic graphics programming using the Apple IIe's awesome palette of six colors, one of which was spandex magenta. I was also exposed to computer porn when my friend got his hands on an ultra secret copy of "sex olympics". In six colors, it was all very... abstract, but its easy to get excited when you are thirteen.


After a brief affair with an
Apple IIGS, I moved on to the
Amiga. The Amiga was absolutely amazing for the time. It could display 4096 colors and had advanced sound capabilities. The fact I could use the "SAY" command in AmigaBASIC to get the computer to talk was a never ending source of excitement. I used a program called Deluxe Paint to do everything from digital paintings to designing self contained ecosystems (a long running obsession dating back to junior high - I was a weird kid.) The Amiga was the first computer I used to compose music. I used a MIDI interface to connect my Korg T1 keyboard. I lost quite a few hours in the basement writing music with this setup. I convinced many of my friends and parent's friends to bet on the Amiga as the computing platform of the future. Oops! How was I to know? It was so friggen cool!


Here is the full progression of computers I've used going back to grade school:

TRS-80 -> Apple IIe -> Apple IIgs -> Amiga 2000 -> Amiga 3000 -> Various Macs -> PowerWave (Power Computing's Mac clone) -> Various Intel Boxes Running Windows -> MacBook Pro (today)

What was your first computer? How about your first programming language?

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Comment by Jeffrey Powers on July 13, 2008 at 1:05pm
Vic20 for me.

I have to confess - I liked the idea so much, I did a rundown of computers in my past on a podcast I did Thursday.
Comment by Cameron Souza on July 10, 2008 at 11:18pm
A C64. I clearly remember all the yard work I did to pay for it!
Comment by David Lassner on July 10, 2008 at 6:07pm
Ok, I'm the old guy so far. PDP-8 in BASIC with no storage other than paper tape for saving programs. 1971. Oh wait, this isn't twitter so I can use more than 140 charac
Comment by Sub Callnop on July 10, 2008 at 1:20pm


The first computer I ever programmed was also not a "computer", but the HP-42S programmable RPN calculator in 1987. It has pretty spartan, even by the standards of the day. Only 8K of memory total! The operand stack was only 4 deep, and there were absolutely no control functions--everything was done via jumps after flag tests. However, it was probably the best introduction to programming I could have had, since it was so close to the hardware.

That calculator got me through college chemistry and physics. It was my secret weapon, releasing me from the expense of matlab on a desktop. It could solve simultaneous equations right out of the box, did vector operations, etc. and all with a programmable interface.

It wasn't till CDS turned me on to Unix that something came even remotely close to the joy of programming the HP-42S.
Comment by Jeff Tucker on July 10, 2008 at 8:53am
Okay, this probably doesn't count, but my first computer wasn't a computer. There were none (of the home/small office variety). It was this puppy, a tty-43. I had email back in 1976 at USC-ECL, and had full computing and word processing capabilities too. I would carry it from place to place and put the telephone handset into it to get it connected. People were absolutely blown away, especially by the email. Aloha, Jeff

Comment by Stephen McMahon on July 10, 2008 at 2:25am
My first computer was a Vic-20 as well. I had this long before I ever learned to type, so one of my strongest memories was hunting & pecking to enter their example program which at the time seemed like page after page of something like Sanskrit. The final, and intended result, after numerous re-reads for finding type-os was a very short 'beep'. After the frustration that I experienced with that it is hard to believe that I ended up becoming a career computer programmer!

In my sophomore year in high school we had a class called "Computer Math" where we learned BASIC on Apple IIe computers. By the time I was a Sr. we were using Commodore 128s and then we got our first PC during the second semester. I used to beg my parents to let me drive to school, which was 12 miles from home, so I could stay late and work on my projects. Little did I know that I was establishing work habits that would endure another 21 years and counting!
Comment by Daniel Leuck on July 9, 2008 at 11:36pm
JW - I remember the VIC-20. Commodore made a lot of great machines - the Vic-20, C64, Amiga, etc. Its too bad they went the way of the dodo. Grant - You just took me down memory lane. I remember faking sick to stay home and play Ultima II and Ultima III. I'll add Eamon to your list of great Apple II games.

Comment by Brooke Fujita on July 9, 2008 at 11:03pm
@JW Guillaume

Holy crow, my story is exactly the same as yours! ... except for the bit about getting injured in a bench press competition. Muntz.. wotta blast from the past!

Yeahp, I remember Commodore BASIC, poke'ing and peek'ing. And saving data to cassete tapes. And printers w/out true descenders...

I remember those magazines, too. I hacked up a simple database to track my comic book collection from one of those mags. After saving my database to cassete tape, I used to get a big kick outta playing back my data on the stereo tape deck.

Didn't see a TRS-80 until high school, where I'd let everyone copy from homework in Data Processing class.
Comment by Grant on July 9, 2008 at 10:37pm
Ha the first computer I owned was the Apple IIe. i think it looked exactly like this with the 5-1/4" floppy.

I was an early adopter of wasting my youth playing video games. some of my all-time favorites were: taipan

castle wolfenstein

zork - pretty cool text only game. 1/2 the time you spent thinking of off the wall things to try like "eat frog" or something. Wizardry. One of the first RPG D&D games out there.

Ultima II. The most awsome game ever on the Apple. Kind of like a Final Fantasy of its day. Well maybe Ultima III and IV were better but I never got to play them. I discovered beer by then.

and lastly, Leather Goddesses of Phoebos. Strangely enough, I could never get anywhere in this text adventure game. I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that I was at an all boy school at the time.

Comment by Mika Leuck on July 9, 2008 at 10:33pm
The first computer I owned was the PowerBook 1400. I still have it! The first Apple released in Japan only supported katakana. It wasn't very popular.

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