When I was a lad…

13 Mar
Sinclair ZX81

Sinclair ZX81

A couple of days ago, I noticed an article on the BBC news website, that talked about the birth of computing
in the UK. It featured a picture of a ZX81.

Seeing the picture brought back memories, because this was the first computer I actually purchased.

With its 1K (yes thats kilobytes) of ram, people did amazing things. It taught me to write code in an efficient manner, otherwise it wouldnt fit. It taught me to focus on providing a solution (which was usually a game!) rather than worrying on it being pretty. These are skills that programmers new to the industry have a hard time understanding as they write code thats way bigger and more convoluted than they need to be, with way more style than substance.

Heres a link to the original bbc article.


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