We weren’t in a position to afford a computer to program on but the library had a book on BASIC for video games. Since I really wanted to make my own video games, I taught myself BASIC and hand-simulated programs on graph paper.
I suppose it would be more On Brand if I had charged for them but while I tried to start a shareware business in high school (plugins for VGAPlanets) I never successfully shipped due to a) C b) worrying about parents reacting to checks in the mail from the Internet and c) C.
(I had forgotten that! It seems like a natural thing now but “Wait people who you don’t know just *pay you* for this *thing that doesn’t even exist*; is that even legal?” was a major worry for my family and I when I got started for real.)
“Is that even legal?” is like the platonic ideal of a disempowering question because a) most people aren’t qualified to answer it, b) smart people know that, c) the people who are qualified are expensive, and d) spoiler: answer is “Well it depends.”
If often think what the culture of programming looked like if it looked like the culture of law:
"Can you append an element to an array in Javascript?"
"I've heard that it's possible but IANAP."
"You should ask a licensed programmer."
"It's clearly possible... except when not."
"Can you append an element to an array in Javascript?"
"I've heard that it's possible but IANAP."
"You should ask a licensed programmer."
"It's clearly possible... except when not."
"But I'm just trying to put this element in this array."
"Whoa whoa slow down there, an array has a start and and end, and they could be the same, and clearly 'adding' an element to it is beyond your non-specialist mind."
"It seems like it should be routine."
"AHA but out of mem"
"Whoa whoa slow down there, an array has a start and and end, and they could be the same, and clearly 'adding' an element to it is beyond your non-specialist mind."
"It seems like it should be routine."
"AHA but out of mem"
