Prometheus
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2008
- Messages
- 9,472
I was mulling over how fortunate I was to have been around for the rise of home microcomputers throughout the 1980s, and figured I'd make a topic for sharing recollections of all the stuff that they enabled, caused, and whatever else, back then. 
My first personal computer was a Commodore 64, and I remember (when I was little) spending entire weekends trying to figure out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjooF6MthoA, which is still my favourite game in that series. I'm still constantly surprised by the fact that even now, decades later, I still discover new games for this machine that I missed out on at the time.
I also fondly recall Granny's Garden on the BBC Model B machines that most British schools had at the time. How we all feared being sent home at once by the witch. :lol: I got to read the original teacher's notes for this recently, and found it quite interesting how they have several bits of humourous, but otherwise useless, information in there (amongst other things, apparently the Granny from the title drinks gin while her grandkids are outside playing in the garden from the title, and apparently one of the people who encouraged the program's development would sing the title theme down the telephone whilst "sometimes being encouraging"). I wonder how many other educational programs from back then included oddball stuff like this in their notes?
My favourite BBC Model B experience, though, was when we were introduced to a survey-taking program, which would print out a sheet of statistics when every person in the class had filled it in (it was simple stuff like favourite colour, favourite food, and all that sort of junk ). We were told not to mis-spell anything (this was before the days of spell-checkers), as this would cause the statistics to come out incorrectly, but someone did anyway. The teacher just yelled about it, and missed a great opportunity to explain something which was plain to the rest of us - it was a brilliant working example of how if you put bad data in, you get bad data out (and clearly it was an effective one, since I've never forgotten it ).
My first personal computer was a Commodore 64, and I remember (when I was little) spending entire weekends trying to figure out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjooF6MthoA, which is still my favourite game in that series. I'm still constantly surprised by the fact that even now, decades later, I still discover new games for this machine that I missed out on at the time.
I also fondly recall Granny's Garden on the BBC Model B machines that most British schools had at the time. How we all feared being sent home at once by the witch. :lol: I got to read the original teacher's notes for this recently, and found it quite interesting how they have several bits of humourous, but otherwise useless, information in there (amongst other things, apparently the Granny from the title drinks gin while her grandkids are outside playing in the garden from the title, and apparently one of the people who encouraged the program's development would sing the title theme down the telephone whilst "sometimes being encouraging"). I wonder how many other educational programs from back then included oddball stuff like this in their notes?
My favourite BBC Model B experience, though, was when we were introduced to a survey-taking program, which would print out a sheet of statistics when every person in the class had filled it in (it was simple stuff like favourite colour, favourite food, and all that sort of junk
). We were told not to mis-spell anything (this was before the days of spell-checkers), as this would cause the statistics to come out incorrectly, but someone did anyway. The teacher just yelled about it, and missed a great opportunity to explain something which was plain to the rest of us - it was a brilliant working example of how if you put bad data in, you get bad data out (and clearly it was an effective one, since I've never forgotten it ).
