What was Coding like 40 years ago?

References:

AppleSoft BASIC:

Apple II Emulators:

Editing by Mathieu Blanchette
Animations by Jason Heglund
Eye of the Tiger cover by Leon from @neoexplains
Additional music from from Epidemic Sound

Timestamps:
0:00 Hello from 1981!
0:35 Opening Theme
1:29 Getting started
1:50 Fundamentals: PRINT, line numbers, LIST, RUN, GOTO
3:50 HOME (clear screen)
4:10 Variables
5:11 HTAB, VTAB
5:24 GOTO
5:44 Animation
6:20 Subroutines and GOSUB
7:17 Peeks, Pokes, & Pointers
8:07 RETURN
8:35 Write IF for keyboard interaction
9:35 Delay loop
11:16 Working with Arrays (DIM)
13:47 Remarks (REM)
14:01 Random Food Position (RND)
15:26 Debugging Montage
17:34 Snake Subroutines
23:15 Move Food
25:44 Improvements
27:02 Emulators
27:25 Nebula Class! What is Code?

[crism]

This guy is like the Bob Ross of coding. His enthusiasm it's contagious!

[Alex_C_]

This is how I started learning programming. In the Soviet Union in 80s we didn't have personal computers at homes and we didn't have a computer class at school. So we we had lessons, where we studied syntaxes of basic and we wrote programs on paper. Then, once in to weeks, we went to a computer class, where we had 45 minutes to type in a program and debug it. That was a challenge.

[robertmarmaduke]

Back in the 1960s, you sat down at a card punch machine with your code scribbled on notes and CAREFULLY typed out the commands and syntax and punctuation, then took the card deck brick to the mainframe window, logged it in, and left. Next day you found that there was a typo _somewhere in the deck, _ and the program didn't run. Yet somehow, humans went to the moon on DOS 6.0, and designed the Golden Gate Bridge _without computers._

[SebastianLague]

Really enjoyed the video (and that intro was just incredible)! I had a lot of fun trying to code my own version afterwards, although the line number thing really made me appreciate how good we have it these days. Will submit my attempt to the passenger showcase :)

[hidoryy]

what I love about your channel is that most of the other coding youtubers only talk about efficiency, jobs, why this or that language sucks because it's slower running a very specific thing and so on. Your videos really remind me how coding can be fun

[chipotlewhitegirlstarbucks]

Whenever I'm putting off doing my coding work, I put on this video. When most people try to explain computer science to me, I get intimated. This guy is different. He has a cozy, comforting sort of enthusiasm that is super motivating.

[nagualdesign]

Less than 2 minutes in and you've already put a smile on my face. 😊

[david]

In the late 1970s I was a software engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation, working in their old mill spider-laden building in Maynard, MA, mostly on PDP-8 and VT-78 systems software. One lonely night during a weekend or holiday I decided to program a snake on the screen of my favorite small computer, the PDP-12. I did it in assembly language, as was most systems programming on the LINC and PDP-8 computers, which had merged to make the PDP-12. The result was a wonderful, keyboard-driven little game that worked perfectly. I wish there had been a way to release it to the world, but all we had was a mostly clunky user group, DECUS, and I didn't feel up to filling out forms and waiting. I guess I'm the only person who ever played that game I wrote on the PDP-12.

[supermalavox]

You reminded me of my first computer, which I got in 1992. It ran MS-Dos, and had QBASIC as a programming language. It came equipped with a Braille display since I am born blind, and since Snake is a text-based game, I used to let the snake go one character at a time, pressed "p" to pause the game and continue its course when I could feel the distance between it and the number it had to eat. And that was challenging because my PC's Braille display only showed 40 characters and one line at a time. That was before audio games came around and I could hear my position on the board and my goals' position. I had fun! Thanks for the video!

[grawl]

That video brought so many memories. High school, 1987, we had one lesson of informatics a week. It was the first time I touched a computer. Archaic Polish Meritum, 32KB memory, 64x128 monitor pixels, programs loaded via even more archaic cassette recorders. As lessons were facultative, nobody cared much and most pals just played the snake. I was rather curious though and bought a Z80 processor programming textbook, just published. I learned the demands in machine code and started coding. It was easy! The first program I wrote was an improved version of the snake - ca. 800 commands + a short initial program in Basic. I remember how long it took me to type those 800 numbers without errors. But the result was fantastic. Pure satisfaction. You could accelerate the snake's movement from one side to the other by keeping the button pressed and slow down immediately by releasing it. Eating different signs gave different results. I even added some sound and visual effects. And the speed! Had to put a 1000x loop just to make it run slow enough to be playable.
I was thinking about studying informatics but came to the conclusion that it would be boring as a life-long work. Missed opportunity, from today's perspective. I went humanistic and the next time I touched a computer was years later when I had to type up my MA thesis. On a borrowed comp. DOS, Windows, floppy disks, Microsoft Word! At first I had no idea how to get to a new line in Word and had to call my friend, who said "this big button, Enter". :D
Have never coded again. Maybe I'll come back to it some day. But writing in machine code on a 8-bit processor was so much fun. I felt like a magician.

[CrowMacnas]

This might be the best video that I have seen on the internet. It's like a kid's television program but for adults who were kids in the 80's. Makes me feel so good.

[wrkey]

In the mid 70's we got our first computer as my dad was programmer. I was immediately enthralled with it and soon learned to program. This game was the first program I wrote. It was on a Radio Shack TRS-80. I graduated HS in 1980, college in 1983 and in 1982 I started my 35+ year career in IT. Thanks for this video. I've been looking for an old PC just so I could do what you are doing!

[thephoenixsystem]

You captured the excitement of learning your first coding language 👌

Love the debug montage btw

[pjf]

I think learning to code on something like this is great. Gives you a solid base and forces you to think about details we don’t even realize these days due to abstractions and frameworks.

[notjux]

I haven't coded anything in 15 years, but watching someone nerd out over something they love is seriously infectious. Easy sub!

[matanzohar]

Please do more coding challenges on vintage hardware, maybe even make it it's own series! Everything about this is perfect, from the way it's edited to your wardrobe. Your best format so far

[leftfishjet]

The year is 1984 and I'm in my grade four classroom. The school had provided our class with a Commodore 64 and I watched a friend writing lines of code in Commodore Basic during recess (yes, we were those kids). I instantly fell in love with the notion of solving the worlds problems with code and the best parts of my day are still doing essentially the exact same thing that we did in that classroom so (SO) long ago. LOVE this video and would happily binge watch a series on Apple Basic.

[AleksanderFimreite]

This makes me appriciate modern IDE and text editors so much more than I previously was.

[niclash]

Tip 1; Don't print the whole snake on each loop. New position gets the "S" and first position get a space.
Tip 2; Use the screen memory for collision detection, rather than looping though the X and Y arrays. Same for border. Print a border all around, and a single check to see collision (if same character for snake and border).
Tip 3; As someone pointed out, Read and Write pointers on a fixed array is far more efficient as the snake grows larger, and won't slow down the game speed as it grows.
Tip 4; Forget "snake" and do multiplayer "tron" instead.
Tip 5; Multi player; Keyboard not liking multikey presses then leads to some other input device, or use a separate computer connected with cables.

[mediocrefunkybeat]

About ten years ago, my brother was studying for his PhD and a company in the UK offered to pay for a significant chunk of it if he spent the summers working for them as a coder.

The company in question was a supercomputing firm and had a large legacy FORTRAN codebase. My brother's job was to convert from the legacy version of FORTRAN into a newer version and to optimise the code - 77 to 2008 (I believe).

It just so happens that our Grandfather used FORTRAN in his job back in the 70s and my brother would call him for tips and tricks at least once a week. It made me laugh...