my programming life (was: Re: Rotating images)

[Colin Holgate]

On Apr 25, 2009, at 2:54 PM, Randall Reetz wrote:

> What was the actual order of your exposure to any programming  
> languages?

Probably a more detailed answer than you were expecting, but it's fun  
to see it all written down! Here you go:

1978, sort of Fortan in a Casio calculator. I still have that  
calculator somewhere!

1979, a TV console game that was a 100 step assembler, with just four  
characters of output to use.

1980, other people's early DIY home computers, using BASIC.

later in 1980, my own Apple II+, using straight hex machine code, as  
well as BASIC.

1981-1987, mostly BASIC or 6502 assembler, but also took a look at  
Forth and other languages. Was never too interested in Pascal for some  
reason.

1987, got a job in Apple Tech Support, and so starting using a Mac for  
the first time. This was just after HyperCard was released, and I  
quickly saw that it was going to be very popular. I reworked the paper  
version of call logging as a HyperCard stack.

1988-1992, was Multimedia specialist in Apple Tech Support, and so  
used HyperCard a lot, but also played with SuperCard. Didn't  
understand Director, but I could make a ball bounce on the stage. Had  
not even heard of Lingo.

1992-1994, at Voyager programmed many CD-ROMs (including A Hard Day's  
Night), and 60+ floppy disk Expanded Books (and the Expanded Book  
Toolkit), all in HyperCard.

1994-1995, Programmed a series of CD-ROMs at Voyager, using Oracle  
Media Objects, a cross platform competitor to HyperCard. Also  
programmed the Mac version of the "This Is Spinal Tap" CD-ROM, in C.

1995-1997, having the CD-ROMs be released cross platform (previously I  
would do the Mac version, and we would get external companies to port  
it to Windows) became all important, and so I had to learn Director.  
Programmed several Director based CD-ROMs for Voyager.

1998-2002, For Funny Garbage, I programmed many museum kiosks, CD-ROMs  
(including three for I.D. Magazine), online games and activities. All  
in Director.

2003-present, Flash was too popular by now, and so clients wanted  
things to be done in Flash and not Director, so I had to learn how to  
use it too. ActionScript 1/2 until just under two years ago, and AS3  
since then.