My main consumption of time these days, is unfortunately notused on homework, but on computers. Trendy words like ‘Internet’and ‘The Superinformation Highway’ are both terms which seemessential in my everyday. When I though disconnect fromcyberspace, and my computer and I are all alone, programming iswhat I deal with.
I make small programs, and since practice makesperfect, that’s where I’m heading. QBasic is an updated version of the worlds first programminglanguage, Basic. With Basic you are, compared to other languages,quite limited, but good results can still be obtained, even as abeginner. I first started to program after one winter vacation, wheremy cousin can to visit.
He knew a bit of how to program, andtaught me everything he knew. I immediately became an addict tothe new world of errorlevels, internal and external commands etc. The first programs I made were simple and useless. For example asequence which generates random circles, at random places, inrandom colors on the screen. Or a program which asks you how oldyou are, and how many cigarettes you smoke everyday. Then ittells you if you smoke too much.
These programs are not usefulbecause they don’t satisfy any of the two demands: 1) It doesn’tfulfill any of my needs. 2)It’s not suitable for a wideraudience. Today, the list of programs I have made, satisfy in a muchmore professional way those simple requirements. I have made, incooperation with a friend, a game which tests your short-termmemory. There must be a thousand of those on the market today,but ‘RecoN’ has a very nice graphical interface, and online help. We released the game as ‘shareware’.
This means that anyone canhave a copy without paying for it, but if they after 30 dayschose to keep it on their computer, they must send X amount ofmoney to a specified address. Naturally we still haven’t gottenany donations, but at least we know for sure, that the game hasbeen copied to well over 250 persons, so it has satisfied somedemands. So how can programming benefit me in a more practical way?Well, I made one program, which works like an alarm-clock. It’ssimple, but it works.
The knowledge I gathered from making thatprogram, and all the knowledge from all the other programs, willof cause be essential, if I chose to become a programmer afterIB. There I will need all the experience, I can get.
