Hello World_ it’s only the beginning
A sensational story of when the first line of code was written
It passed a very long time from when I wrote my first line of code… If I don’t remember bad it was 1990.
I had seen my father that wrote on his Commodore PC-1 and he seemed many times happy and many times sad, but he always was continued to type on his keyboard.
After a few years I understood that he just works on a program that permitted to calculate the geospatial distances starting by the coordinate only for a personal hobby.
Until one day he told me:
Would you try?
The monitor was ON with his black background and the green cursor that seems to tell you What are you waiting for?
I was a child and just had started to learn the letters and the alphabet, so my father had dictated me:
Now type… 10 PRINT Ciao Marco
I remember that I had typed with a single finger the instruction and in my mind I don’t understand what I was doing.
The programming language was GW-BASIC and was needed to define the number of code lines for every instruction.
The simple instruction of PRINT was permitting you to a text on the console output.
The next step:
Now we need to execute and try the code…
What do he means by executing? It was the first time that I had to listen this word and I had much expectation about this execution.
Pressed F2, the GW-BASIC IDE gone in the background and the left top of the screen was appear the words ‘Ciao Marco’ : it was impossible… it was incredible.
I just had written and executed my first line of code: it was wonderful.
After this occasion occurred many others and every time that I had to try to coding with my father has increased the consciousness that it was the best thing in the world.
This electronic box was do all I was typing on the keyboard. I had submitted an order to the machine and it was response to me.
The sensation of happy was soon interrupted by the presence of a compilation error….
In my mind I had thought that this machine was beautiful but delicate: it understood only if you spoke in ITS language.
I need to study an other language.
I was wrapped by a lot of different sensations from the happiness to had written and executed a piece of code, to fear of having to learn a new language, most different from the natural language.
Happy for the results!
After this moment I was fascinated about the programming languages and for the IT in general and I have dedicated my life for them.
I have lived again several times these feelings during my studies and at work: the fear to make a mistake while coding and the happiness to bring your working software in Production.
A big thanks to my father that give me this little-big opportunity.
Thank you for your time!
