Tag: all my code is belong to you

Version 0.1

I first learned to code in ZX Spectrum BASIC at around the age of 10.  It was 1986.  More accurately, I learned to type and eventually understand the code from various ‘program your own games’ books and ‘Sinclair User’ magazine articles.

It was a little later that I actually achieved an understanding of the primitive building blocks of the code.

Quite possibly my young brain was prepped for the logic and structure of programming through my obsession with the essentially ‘if-then-else’ based Fighting Fantasy series of ‘choose your own adventure’ game books.

‘The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’ was the first I remember owning, and I believe the first in the series. They were awesome.  My very early unguided ventures into coding my own programs were literally codifications of these simple narratives.

I, like many people, have learned a lot of what I know about coding from commercially driven ‘pay for knowledge’ sources such as at university, training courses, and books. However, I am just old enough to claim some memory of the relatively early years of open source code sharing.

So, like everybody, I have also learned a stack from the open source information made available by the generosity, or naivety, nevertheless sheer enjoyment of sharing through magazines, blogs,  websites, friends and various other mediums.

So, I have decided to dig up and throw into the pot of shared online code, a bunch of my own work; better or poorer to be debated, but certainly useful.

Note: I don’t claim that any of this code still works, nor either that that which does, is optimal for the task.  Much of it is old, some of it is new, the context and constraints of the environment it was written for are here absent, but it all served a purpose.