Sadly, the first games I wrote were also my last. The types of peeks and pokes he used are what crushed me when I had a C64 at almost that age. A couple more years and much cleaner basic from the C128 at least let me make sprite-and-line maze games. And I copied a few of those old magazine games.
It's amazing, people writing code without having a comp and almost getting it right! Look how clean his line numbering is. I was thoroughly unable to write without huge gaps like 1000 1100 1200 1300 2000 2100 2200 2300 2400 when then filled in with stuff like 2500 2530 2540 2541 2543 2600 2630 2631 2632 2640 2650.
Computing only got harder, way too fast for me. (So did science, once you left Chem 101 that I could almost handle; I then took one look at Orgo in the next year's book and changed majors.)
I ended up in Accounting, where the rate of being able to pay rent vs mind pulverizing concepts was much more in my favor!
The only similarly important nod to my childhood I made was getting rather lucky to track down the book that made my screen handles (there was one earlier one before this one) what they are today.
But imagine the pre-1999 difficulty of that! "Some child's book from the 1950's aka decades out of print, about a Phoenix with a title I don't remember and an author I couldn't even pronounce!"
But I got lucky twice. First, by 2001 Safe-For-Work material was finally getting to be added to sites that search engines were getting around to indexing, (after the Non-Safe stuff was notoriously there first.)
And in 2000 a small publisher meanwhile was being deluged with so many fond memories like mine from her friends, that she *re-published it*! Well now, that's a whole new story. Brand new edition, that meant it was actively for sale, when search engines were starting to get the handle of getting past spammers.
All it took about 2004 was some brilliantly inspired long sequence of browsing, and suddenly I had it!
And now in our Wiki-led age, with all its Notability problems, I give to you:
David and the Phoenix
http://en.wikipedia....avid_and_the_Phoenix
