Here is a story about how I learned to code at age 13. How most of us learned.
I was 13 in 1980. Back then, at home, our family had an Apple II Plus, but not a lot of software – especially we had very few games to play.
But pretty much every computer had BASIC as a default programming language. This allowed you to write your own programs. From a simple “Hello” to anything you could dream up.
And we wanted to play games – wait – we wanted to make games!
In the early days of home computing, if you had a home computer, there’s a good chance you knew about the book BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl. It was unlike anything else at the time.
The cover of BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl
It wasn’t a book you read and put back on the shelf. The pages were filled with listings for simple but surprisingly engaging games, and the only way to experience them was to sit down at your computer, type in the listing and bring them to life one keystroke at a time. For a lot of people, like me, it was their first real introduction to detailed computer code. If they didn’t realize it at the time it quietly taught you how code worked while you were just trying to get a game to run.
You didn’t just read code. You had to transcribe it slowly, carefully, and almost always, imperfectly. The first time you ran it, it didn’t work – gosh, it never worked the first time!
The “Chomp” page from BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl
You’d get a syntax error. The cursor would just come back, like the machine was politely telling you that you missed something obvious. So you went hunting line by line, character by character – was it a missing quote? A mistyped variable? A number out of place?
Somewhere between retyping line 120 for the third time and realizing that “O” and “0” were not the same thing! You stopped just copying code… you started understanding it!
- Why did line 50 send you back to line 10?
- What did GOTO really do?
- Why did changing a single number make the game easier… or impossible?
You began to experiment. Carefully at first. Then with more confidence.
Change the fuel amount from what was listed in the printout.
Increase the speed variable. Rewrite a message to include a friend’s name just to see if you could.
That’s when it stopped being their game and started becoming yours.
The “Super Star Trek” page from BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl
I loved the Apple II because it didn’t try to hide anything from you. It didn’t abstract the experience. It handed you the raw material and said, “Figure it out.”
And with of BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl you had a map. Not a clear one, but enough to get lost in.
No internet to check answers. No forums. No videos explaining what you did wrong. Just you, the machine, and the quiet realization that if it didn’t work, it was probably your fault. And if you stuck with it long enough, you could fix it.
Maybe that was the real lesson. Not BASIC the language. BASIC the mindset. Patience, precision, and curiosity – and a kind of stubbornness.
The moment one of those programs finally worked: No errors! The game responded! The game played! What a feeling.
It wasn’t flashy. By today’s standards, it was barely anything at all. But I knew every line that made it happen. I had earned it. That mattered to me.
Looking back now, it’s easy to forget how direct that experience was. Today, everything is layered. Tools on top of tools. Frameworks, APIs, abstractions. It’s powerful, no question. But back then, there was nowhere to hide. If something broke, you were close enough to the problem to understand why.
That is why, every once in a while, I go over to my Apple II sitting there, just waiting. And that of BASIC Computer Games book, worn at the edges, pages falling out, full of someone else’s ideas that became my own the moment I typed them in. And I some of them in again.
William W. Winter is the creator of Apple II Adventure Studio, where you can try your hand at making text adventures with a modern web-based design tool. You can try it out and make your own text adventures at: https://textadventurestudio.com
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The post Learning to Code in 1980: A Book, BASIC, and Pure Persistence appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.
