lol greetings fellow Basic pencil coder! I used to also write basic programs by hand because I didn’t have a computer.

Pournelle original claim to fame was as one of the authors of “Strategy of Technology“ which was very influential in the 70s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_Technology

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mlhpdx 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My people. My first paid programming was hand translating a BASIC app to C. I did it on the same paper the original was printed on (green/white continuous feed). When I thought I had it right I went to my mom’s work in the middle of the night to type it in and check it. Over the course of a summer I made it work.

The money went to buying my first computer (kit).

	▲	rigonkulous 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Hail, fellow BYTE'ian! I took what I learned from BYTE and wrote a CP/M terminate/stay-resident 'driver' that got some interesting hardware working well enough to get me the contract, as a teenager, to write the DOS driver for thing as well. That led to a rocket-ride career through decades of systems programming, and I just can't thank the BYTE folks enough for those mind-expanding days ..
	▲	k4rnaj1k 42 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[dead]

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SilentM68 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yea, I hear Ya! I wrote BASIC programs by hand, as well at home while in high school for the same reason :)