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Re:Show HN: Space Shooter in QBasic by ljoshua on Monday February 01, 2016 @09:10PM (#11017260)
Oh man, QBasic was the first programming language I ever encountered and started playing around--what great times!

At the time (I was probably 11 or so) I knew that it was important to learn to write serious stuff, and knew that an operating system was probably "serious stuff," and so I thought it might be a good learning experiment to write an operating system in QBasic. Needless to say I was missing a few links in how "serious stuff" was written back then, but it sure was a fun intro!

Re:Show HN: Space Shooter in QBasic by luxpir on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @04:13AM (#11018396)
Same here. Even had an 8-note keyboard-driven music player built in, iirc. Although it lead to a life-long interest, I never really wrote anything 'serious' from scratch since then. Scripts and editing others' code was about my limit.

And this is despite trying at 12-13 to 'go pro' with Visual C++ ordered through a student discount and the C++ For Dummies book (I had no idea where to start) that never took off the ground. A wish there was a local group or mentor I knew about back then!