#oneaday Day 223: Old Stuff

Last time I visited my parents, I nabbed a few old Atari-related books. I'll probably do something a bit more detailed with them on Atari A to Z at some point — either an article about them or perhaps a video "reading" of bits of them.

I find looking back over these old books and magazines fascinating, because they really highlight how computer use has changed over the years. Back in the early days of Page 6 magazine, a publication which my father, my brother and I all contributed to at one time or another, it was seemingly expected that most people who purchased a home computer would at least dabble in programming, for example; this was understandable, given that BASIC was readily accessible either via a cartridge or built into the system's ROM in later model Atari 8-bits.

It went further than that, though. Magazines included type-in listings that you could copy into your computer and save to disk or cassette, then have some "free" software in exchange for your hard work (and purchasing the magazine in the first place). For me, this was always a highly enjoyable activity, and is probably the reason I can type so well today. I absolutely loved typing these things in and ending up with something I could make use of on my computer; it was second only to actually having built the program yourself.

In the case of games and applications built in BASIC, these listings had an important secondary function: they were things you could study in order to learn various techniques. Much like one of the most effective ways of learning a new language is to immerse yourself in it as much as possible (hello, The Expression: Amrilato), programming rewards those with the confidence to poke around a bit, fiddle around and attempt to adapt things they think they understand to their own requirements.

I was never particularly good at programming, but I was at least competent enough to put together some basic (no pun intended) things using the old Atari computers. I vividly recall being very proud I made a (rather crap) treasure hunting game, for example — and much of what I needed to create that I learned from studying various type-in listings.

Machine code was another matter entirely. People who could program in assembly language or raw machine code back then are still like gods to me. I don't understand how anyone can possibly work like that. But, again, it was something that was kind of taken for granted back then; if you wanted your computer to do something that BASIC was a bit too slow to handle, you'd use machine code. Sometimes the aforementioned magazines even published entire machine code games and applications, the listing for which would produce a bootable floppy disk or cassette just like the ones you'd go out and buy in a shop. This is still kind of incredible to me.

I really want to talk about this some more, but I'm wondering what the best way to do it might be. Perhaps some videos showing off the books and their contents, interspersed with some footage of me attempting some of the exercises and listings therein? I dunno.

Whatever I end up doing with these, looking back over these old books and magazines reminds me of why computers and gaming excited me in the first place. It's because I'm a massive nerd.