Over the course of my life I am proud to say I was a programmer. I was not a hardcore programmer and my coding was never as neat as it should have been, but I was in the game. And why was I in the game? Because I was lucky enough to have a Commodore Vic-20 when I was a kid. I spent hours typing BASIC to make simple programs from books and magazines. It gave me some patience and a deep appreciation for computers. This book, Mastering Your Vic-20 Through Eight Basic Projects, came with my Vic-20 and it was a great beginning resource for my humble brain.
Here is the back cover…
Hopefully it brings a smile to all you other early Vic-20 users out there.
The Retroist
Editor/Podcaster at Retroist
The Retroist is like a BBQ on a bun without the bones. You're only human daddy. Chomp!
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There’s a typo at the end of your first paragraph… But I doubt anyone noticed. Don’t think there are too many Vic-20 fans here. I’m a Commodore fan, so I found it ;) I did all my BASIC programming on the Atari 400 and Coleco ADAM.
You stand corrected, good Sir! It was the Vic-20 that inspired my interest in computers and programming. I used to mess around in BASIC (using commands to have the screen tell her she smells) just to prank my sister. All hail the Vic!
My fondest memory as a teenager with his first computer, also a VIC-20, was calling up Commodore directly to ask them about the hi-res graphic mode mentioned in the product literature.
They sent me, free of charge, a Xeroxed copy of the appropriate section of the yet to be released Programmers Reference Guide. It felt good to have all that “secret” info about doing bitmapped graphics on the VIC, before the public had access to it.
I like to believe that somewhere between the on-hold moments of that telephone call, ‘ol Jack said, “Send the kid a copy!” :)