The BBC Micro has a special place in my heart. My father was teaching computer skills evening classes at the local library, and one day he came home with a Model B. 32k of memory, cassette-storage, and a flickering green monitor. He plugged it in, fired up the Acorn demo tape, and I was hooked. This magical box could show pictures and games! He eased me into BASIC (the BBC BASIC language is a thing of beauty, with proper functions and procedures) and I was the happiest 7-year-old on the block. There’s nothing too impressive about:

10 PRINT "HELLO WHAT IS YOUR NAME"
20 INPUT A$
30 PRINT "HELLO ";A$

But for me, it was pure magic. I could make it talk! I gradually worked up to writing games, some of which were even fun to play. My parents dutifully admired my creations and gave encouragement.

Years later, I’ve worked with everything from C to Rust, Pascal to Visual Basic for Applications. My wrist-watch is more powerful than the old Beeb. Yet, I don’t think I’d have achieved any of this without a good grounding on the BBC Micro and parental encouragement.

Ah that’s awesome Herbert - thanks for sharing your story

What’s been your favourite language/s so far? Actually don’t answer that - I’ll ask it in your AMA when/if you do a PragProg Author Spotlight

I’m hoping to do an author spotlight about the time Hands-On Rust goes into final release.