As everyone is receiving their shiny new ZX Spectrum Next computers from the successfully funded Kickstarter (that I’m kicking myself now for not backing), I’ve dug up my original copy of my ZX Spectrum BASIC Programming manual from 1983.
The ZX Spectrum was my first home computer, on which I had my first experience of programming. 37 years later, I’m a software developer still coding every day, and still fascinated with software development.
Although flipping through the manual itself is a historical treasure trove, there are a couple of pages which are possibly my first snippets of source code:
I’ve no idea what this was that I was working on (a question and answer game of some kind?), but it’s weird looking back at what was quite possibly some of the first code I wrote, 37 years ago.
Other hand written notes that are interesting, it looks like I was keeping a wanted list of games:
I don’t remember getting a joystick interface until much later, but I was keeping notes on available interfaces at the time. 16GBP for a Kempston joystick interface? Wow!
Plus some notes for a few games, Lords of Midnight, and some other games that I can’t remember playing:
Waiting now for the promised next production run of Nexts, and this time round I definitely plan to get one!