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Comment by spacekitcat | Hacker News Reader

I’m jealous that older generations get to say they wrote their first program on iconic hardware. Computers of my time were much faster, but they were very generic.

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I started programming in the early 80s, and started programming professionally in 1987. The biggest difference between early micros and PCs was that most early micros had better documentation in the box than the PCs did. For example, a C64 or a TI 99/4a had documentation that would take you from beginner to being able to access hardware features. The PC, on the other hand, you had to buy books from third parties to get that level of documentation. To be fair, the PC had a lot more going to document.

I started in 84 on a PCjr. Had the PCjr Technical Reference manual, which was amazing. It even had the BIOS assembly source in the back of it.

IBM did a great job with their product. The clones on the other hand... well, sometimes you were lucky to get a ziploc bag with 20 page warranty and how to install documentation from each of the parts.

This resonates with me. My first computer was an Acorn Electron. IIRC the user guide included things about IRQs, 6502 assembly language, and even details like using 'two pass assembly' to assemble a program which referred to a something before that thing had been defined.

My first PC came with instructions on how to connect the keyboard, mouse and monitor. I recall thinking it was really strange that something could be sold without instructions on all its functions. Until then every electronic device I'd bought came with instructions that were 'complete' in the sense that everything you could do in normal use was documented.

Yes, I feel a bit robbed by 90s computers when I pick up old manuals or cheap programming books for things like the BBC Micro.

A lot of the newer Apple products are fairly iconic as well: iPhones, iPads, MacBook Pros, and a lot of people consider some of the iMacs such as G3 or G4 to be iconic as well. So there's still contemporary iconic hardware for someone to write their first program on :)

I mean, I'm 32 and I programmed on one of those as a teenager. If you do the math, yes it was 20 years old at the time, but I had a blast anyway.

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