What was your first experience?

[Guy]

We did computing in primary school, in the 1960s, before the invention of the PC. We had these cards, and filled in small rectangles with a pencil, then sent them off to IBM. IBM sent back a print out with the answers. We were young, and it was just simple things. At that time, a computer occupied a building, and was owned by IBM. We didn't imagine that computers would get small enough for people to own themselves.

In the 1980s I used a computer at work. We used Word Perfect, before WSYWIG. At that time, typing a page to be printed, was a bit like writing HTML code. If you wanted bold or italic, you typed in a code for the beginning of the bold or italic, and a code for where it finished. That is also what you saw on the screen. The screen was just black and white, and only contained text - no graphics. Computers those days ran DOS. Those computers cost much more than computers do today. Word Perfect was the most popular word program. Not long after, color monitors were released. WSYWIG (what you see is what you get) was also introduced, so what you saw on the screen looked the same as what would be printed. Microsoft brought out windows, then later, Microsoft Word. Microsoft gained market dominance, as it was the first to bring out an office program - Microsoft Office. Word Perfect followed, and brought out Perfect Office, but Microsoft already had market domination.

The first computer I bought, was a 486 DX2 66. I had the choice of a 170 or 220 mb hard drive. I paid the extra, and got the 220 mb. I remember my brother saying, "You will never fill it up." We couldn't imagine how rapidly computers and software would develop. It ran DOS and Windows 3.1. I also bought the first version of Microsoft Office.

[floppy]

1983: HP41CV (for about 800€ with the card reader extensions, memory extensions, math ROMs extensions..). This was not cheap.
The machine had a bug, and we could put codes in the machine own registers (not the user memory) for making running programm faster (and making it hanging up the machine sometime if the program was not correct written). I was in a computer club and made the publication of my first programm (like open source): find X in aX2 +bX + c = d the quickest possible way. We used the RPN. During Baccalaureat in France, I used this machine. It was fun: nobody could use it in the whole school except my professor who had the same.

[mpayne]

Lucky me, I first started programming just in 2005 when I was in high school.  We were using Turbo C 45 if I remember it correctly, it was a pain having to remember all those syntax so I had a cheat paper that listed all the ones we used in class and hid it under the keyboard.

I would frequently look at it so I would follow through the discussion. I think that worked as there came a time when I did not have to use it anymore, fortunately.