Monthly Archives: August 2012

Back in the days of the Commodore 64 I had the itch to learn programming. I wanted to make the next Ghostbusters game. To do so I picked up a book on assembly language programming. Unfortunately at the time I had no concept of an Internet, and I wasn’t old enough to be a University academic. I had no one to mentor me, but did have some encouragement from a couple of friends: Russell and Csaba.

My foray into assembly language was brief. I managed to put a sprite I created on the screen and move it horizontally or diagonally using the joystick… Except any movement just displayed a streak. I never did figure out how to create a delay loop long enough that sprite movement wasn’t at 1000 miles per hour.

The itch to program also hit me in the early to mid 90s when I ran a couple of BBS’s. As with before it was video games that inspired me, Tradewars and Legend of the Red Dragon in this case. This time my door game, BANG, did come to fruition. BANG was programmed in a proprietary language, BAJA, used by the Synchronet BBS Software system. I released the source code, thought at this time I knew nothing of GNU or free software.

Years passed and I took up Linux in the late 90s. About mid 2005 I decided I wanted to try writing some formula fiction. I thought one way that I might be able to inspire creativity and jumpstart the thought process was to program a suite of world generation tools. That itch turned into IceUtils, fantasy tools based on the Rolemaster RPG system.

I have never considered myself a programmer, and “real” programmers who look at my code would probably be horrified, but programming has to start somewhere…even if it’s a messy place.

These days potential programmers have an even greater chance to succeed. Free software and open source software have opened a lot more possibilities. No more buying several hundred dollar compilers. Source code examples everywhere and a plethora of free languages mean programmers have a bit more flexibility. Add to this the community aspect of free software and the willingness of experienced code monkeys to mentor hacks like myself.

So whenever I see talk about the separation between those who code and those who don’t I typically consider that it’s really just about desire. I don’t believe you have to be an expert to code a good program, but you have to start. As with my Ghostbuster sprite foray, you may not finish. And like my BANG door it may lack a bit of polish (in this case a real programmer improved my code for a version 2 of BANG). But if you write a program then you’ve done something.