These icons show my favorite development environments. In case you don’t recognize some of these, I will tell you. . .
- QBASIC
- VB6
- Multimedia Fusion 2.0 Developer
- PureBASIC
- SharpDevelop (C# WinForms)
- CodeBlocks (C)
- Adventure Game Studio
- AutoIt
- Unity
These are listed in chronological order of when I learned them. I started programming in QBasic on my grandma’s Windows 98 machine. Windows 98 as well as some earlier versions of windows shipped with QBasic installed and hiding out in the system folder. Upon doing some exploration through the system when I was board, I discovered this program and didn’t realize what it was until I looked it up. I had no knowledge about programming, but I quickly became obsessed with QB at the age of about 8 y.o. I spent several years learning the language and made some basic programs and games. One of my main developments around this age was a command line program that acted as an operating system for my grandma. It replaced explorer.exe in windows 98 and would allow her to more easily use the system by typing more obvious commands, like “internet” or “email” for example.
From that point the obvious progression was moving to Visual Basic. I figured if I liked QB and it wasn’t too hard to use, that I’d probably like vb also. I started by downloading an abandonedware version of VB3.0 (16-bit environment). I quickly decided that I liked the language, so I eventually got a copy of VB6.0. These were some of the first things I ever downloaded from the internet. At that point I was afraid of downloading because of viruses. This was a little before torrents were a thing. I believe the main site back then was rapidshare.
A couple years later I ended up going to a tech camp that used Fusion and found out that I liked it, but quickly found it to become too limiting. I still found it useful if I was board or lazy though and I just wanted to make something simple and easy. I made a few games and a little clock widget for part of the BOS (Buddha Operating System) which was the name I had given to the ‘OS’. I didn’t even know who/what Buddha was. The name happened because my grandma was Polish and we called her Busia, but as a kid I couldn’t say it properly, so it sounded like Buddha. The name just stuck. The OS later featured a GUI that was programmed in VB6.0.
The rest just kind of followed from that and I don’t remember the exact details. I still use most of this software today except for QBasic and Fusion. The ones I use most now are SharpDevelop, AGS, and unity. I still occasionally go back to VB6 though. It’s a pretty much timeless tool that still even runs on Windows 10 with some hacks, but the software produced with it runs just fine without hacks. I believe this was the pinnacle of Microsoft’s developments before their philosophy turned to ‘bloat and die’. RIP Terry.
When I was about 16-17, I went through a little OS dev phase because I wanted to make a real OS after learning that my BOS thing wasn’t actually an OS. After attempting FASM (assembly language), I learned that it was more work than fun and that if I wanted to make a ‘good’ OS I’d have to learn how to write all the drivers myself instead of relying on BIOS interrupts. I had a decent little real-mode OS, but protected mode was just too hard, so I left it at that.
A year or so later I was riding in a friends car and I noticed something interesting about the radio. It said the name of the song that the radio station was playing (RDS). I was completely perplexed by it while my friend and her mom just didn’t care. I learned from this that radio is capable of sending other things than just sound. This was before the internet and cell phones got big, so it was very strange to think that something like that was being sent wirelessly. This eventually ignited my interest in radio.
I was browsing the internet one day and came across this site called sci-toys (I think) where the guy showed how to make an AM transmitter with a crystal oscillator and a tiny audio transformer. At the time, this seemed very intriguing because I didn’t know that transmitters could even be made by an individual and just assumed that the radio stations had some kind of secret control system or something. When I discovered that anyone could in-theory build a transmitter, I immediately knew I wanted to do that. It gave me a sense of defiance against the system.
After discovering that the AM transmitter worked, I knew right away that I wanted more power because it only went a few feet. I had some generic FRS walkie-talkies at the time and they claimed 5W on the UHF band (which I now know is not even close to true), but this gave me an idea of range for RF power. I figured if I could make a 5W AM transmitter, that it would probably go as far as the walkie-talkies. Back then, there was a serious lack of info on the internet and if there was any, it was just old hams using tubes. I knew I needed to make an amplifier, but I couldn’t figure out how. Eventually, I gave up and the radio stuff was put on hold until I got older.
Now I mostly do electronics and radio. The programming is just kind of a side hobby.
So that’s about it for now. I could keep going into more detail, but I think that gives a good enough idea.