Every programmer knows the first program one must accomplish when learning a new language. But it was only when I was about 16 that I’ve read the book “The C Programming Language”, by Brian W. Kerningham and Dennis Ritchie, where the first program was in fact:

#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
    printf("hello, worldn");
}

But my adventure in programming began some years before.

I was about eleven years-old and the ZX Spectrum was hype! I did not have one (yet!) but a school colleague had and so I borrow him the things’ manual. From there, I asked him to try some BASIC instructions that I’ve wrote in a sheet of paper. The next day he would bring me the screen output on the same paper. After studying that at home, I would ask him more tryouts… until he fed up.

After a while I convinced my parents that the ZX Spectrum was the future and they would like me to be in the future, right?
[…]


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