I never thought that that small device similar to a typewriter with a cassette would lead me years later to discover a huge world, gigantic and exciting world, the computing.
I was twelve or thirteen years old, when the first computer arrived at my house, a Comodore 64 with a floppy drive to load games and programs which had to be connected to a television, it came equipped with 64Kb of Ram memory, with a qwerty keyboard with four double function keys on the right, operating in text mode and in graphic mode with 16 colors.
When I turn on the equipment and after waiting a few minutes, the screen with a blue background appears, welcoming me, and now what? Searching through the manuals I see a small, rather thick book, in which, in addition to countless tips and instructions, I find various texts written in a peculiar language which I discovered was called BASIC.
BASIC was the first general-purpose programming language with a simple structure and a good set of operators, with an unlimited field of action, and quick learning. Its code is based on English vocabulary and mathematical expressions and is made up of hundreds of instructions that allow the processing of texts, images and files, originating in the early 70s, of which various variants appeared such as QuickBasic, GWBasic or QBasic included in Microsoft’s MS-Dos 5.0 operating system version.
The structure of programs developed in Basic was written in lines numbered ten by ten, which could be referenced in the code using the GOTO XX instruction, to make the program become to execute from said line. In each line we wrote the instruction code corresponding to the process we wanted the machine to do at that moment.
BASIC had a great influence on programming, as it was one of the first high-level programming languages to become widely available, which had great importance in the popularization of computer programming, and was used by millions of people around the world. the world.
Initially the Comodore 64 was intended mainly for leisure, being something more similar to a current video game console than a real computer, however it allowed applications to be developed from its programming language, being able to interact with graphics and sounds to a certain extent, since they had limited capabilities, generating pixel graphics and vector drawings.
The Comodore allowed the editing of documents and complex calculations, and thanks to peripherals such as printers they could print documents, however the great success of the Comodore in homes around the world were games, being able to enjoy titles such as Pac-Man, Mario Bros, Tetris, Froger or Space Invaders.
Returning to the story, several days later, and already familiar with the use of the cartridges which had to be inserted into a computer slot, and the basic instructions for loading games and small programs included in the same, it seemed like a good idea to type one of the programs included in the manual, in order to find out more about the operation and capabilities of my new toy.
After several hours of finger typing (no typing at that time), I was finally able to execute the written code, receiving countless messages indicating code or syntax errors on several lines, which It forced me to review all the written code, correct the errors detected and try my luck again, until I got it to work. I did this procedure several more times, trying to find out what the strange lines that I typed said, which, together with the manual included with the machine, which I began to study, allowed me to understand the rules, syntax and basic functions of this programming language, years later, he would discover a fascinating world in computing in all its extension.
This first initiation aroused a curiosity in me, which would lead me years later to learn in record time many of the existing computer applications at the user level of that time, the late 80s, where works, lotus 123, wordstar and other applications ran on 8086 machines, with 5.25 or 3.5 floppy drives of 1.44Mb each.
I remember that in those years, the programs or applications came on several disks from which the programs were installed, copying their content into folders located on the modest hard drive of the computers, which did not exceed 20Mb of storage capacity. storage.
Years later with the arrival of the famous Barracuda, hard drives with a capacity of up to 2Gb that already worked at 7,200 revolutions per minute, and the subsequent development of their storage capacities, along with the evolution of microprocessors, after the launch of Intel’s 32-bit 386 model in the mid-1980s, until the end of the Pentium family in the 1990s, the computer allowed the appearance of the first graphical operating system, causing the evolution of the software, the appearance of the first versions of Office, Photoshop, Corel and other applications that are still on the market in much more advanced versions.
This evolution brought with it the arrival of the first viruses (barrotes or ping pong), whose purpose was normally the elimination of information, and with them the corresponding antivirus (viruscan from McAfee), as well as the first utilities to increase or improve the operation. of the machine, such as disk defragmenters, file compressors, and the like.
The appearance of programming languages for Windows environments, such as visual basic, delphi (pascal), the arrival of the C language, C++ and C#, changed the way we view computing, facilitating the arrival of countless of applications and allowing companies to access a world that would facilitate many tasks, increase productivity and in some cases sales and profits.
The arrival of the Internet to companies and homes in the late 90s began to change the way we communicate, the implementation of email and the exchange of digital documentation changed the world forever. The growth and daily use of the Internet, the consolidation of the World Wide Web, and the appearance of countless applications have unleashed a revolution that grows day by day at speeds impossible to follow, and that points us to an unpredictable future.
