Have never witnessed so many people with ZX Spectrum as in this poll!
My case:
Got it when in sixth grade. Used to wonder what sin and cos functions were (having not studied trigonometry as yet) :-) Managed to figure coordinate geometry out though to create shapes on the screen.
This was the best gift my father ever gave to me. Around seventh grade, I was imagining 3D animated movies. Tried hard to figure an equation that would describe a human face, so I won't have to compose it from geometrical primitives! :-)
Tenth grade, I was programming in machine code (no assembler, converted mnemonics to machine code by hand!). Imagined a compiler (was not aware of them preexisting) and made a simple prototype that converted post-fix expressions to machine code. My last bit was to finally manage to create a 3D animation, as big as I could fit into the available memory (<48K max), precomputed with BASIC and cycled on the screen using machine code.
My biggest loss here was not having any non-volatile storage whatsoever. Used to write down finished programs back into my notebook! Could never build on the top of software I had already written once...
I still have the machine with me in my home country, though haven't touched it in years!
My case:
Got it when in sixth grade. Used to wonder what sin and cos functions were (having not studied trigonometry as yet) :-) Managed to figure coordinate geometry out though to create shapes on the screen.
This was the best gift my father ever gave to me. Around seventh grade, I was imagining 3D animated movies. Tried hard to figure an equation that would describe a human face, so I won't have to compose it from geometrical primitives! :-)
Tenth grade, I was programming in machine code (no assembler, converted mnemonics to machine code by hand!). Imagined a compiler (was not aware of them preexisting) and made a simple prototype that converted post-fix expressions to machine code. My last bit was to finally manage to create a 3D animation, as big as I could fit into the available memory (<48K max), precomputed with BASIC and cycled on the screen using machine code.
My biggest loss here was not having any non-volatile storage whatsoever. Used to write down finished programs back into my notebook! Could never build on the top of software I had already written once...
I still have the machine with me in my home country, though haven't touched it in years!