Code in my life: A chronicle part 1

Curiosity has always been part of my wiring. Before I got into computers I would take apart everything I could (most of the time irreparably).

My first ever digital device was an old Nokia phone we had in the house. It had no internet, no SIM card, just a snake game. My favourite part of it? The settings. I would sneak it into bed at night and play around in the settings at age 7… Until my dad caught me staying up one night after bedtime and took it away.

As many computer lovers, I started young. The first computer I ever used was our family computer that I played games on. It was a horribly slow computer running Windows XP. It took a whole 20 minutes to start up, and a further 10 to load into the desktop.

Around the time I turned 8, my parents got a new family machine, and the old computer became mine. Buggy, Caterpillar Construction Tycoon and Sim Copter were the staples of my childhood.

I have a fondly held memory where I wondered how someone would create a game. In my 8-year-old brain, I thought games were made by drawing every possible screen and your keyboard and mouse inputs would swap between frames in an interactive slideshow type fashion.

Around the time I turned 8, Minecraft started gaining popularity. All my friends were playing it, so I begged my parents to get it. After enough begging, they gave in and sourced a free version from a totally reputable online source and put it on my computer.

I have no idea what version of the game I had. Now I know it had to be one of the classic versions, but not sure exactly what version. All I knew is that my friends had cool features like survival mode, infinite worlds and redstone, while I had a finite world and basic features.

The version of the game I had contained 2 files. One was called minecraft_(random number)_xp.jar, and there was another file: minecraft.bat. Both on my desktop. To play the game I had to double-click the .bat file, a console would open up, it would stay blank for a good while, suddenly print a massive amount to the console, and I would be in the game.

As a kid, my mom would religiously take us to the library, and I would frustrate her with my book choice. I never went for the story books. I always darted for the non-fiction and natural sciences section. Around age 9, one of the books I took out was a full-blown Windows XP reference book. I did not fully understand what I read, but somewhere in it was a page on batch commands, and suddenly that .bat file started to make a bit of sense…

This post will continue in a part 2