Way back then...Apple ][

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The way I remember it...

It was the fall of 1993, I had just started Grade 11, near the far end of the hallway of my highschool were 2 classes. 'Typing' and 'Computer Related Studies'.  It was the first year I would actually have 'computers' as a course in school, which I was pretty excited for. I only had an old Vic 20 at the time, but was hoping for a new IBM Clone 80386 for Christmas (I got my wish, it was from the Sears catalog and at the time was like close to $2000)

I was quite familar with programming in BASIC, but I got a specific book at the local library on AppleSoft Basic to learn to program in the APPLE 2.  Most of the first part of the year was all about 'computer' history. We actually didn't spend too much time using the computers in the lab, which was fine, I enjoyed learning about the history, plus I was part of the school newspaper that year so I got to use the Apples running the newspaper program "The Newsroom".

When we finally got our first project, it was to create a multiple choice quiz. I recall us having about a month or two to work on it. I finished it in about a week, and spent the rest of the class helping the other students. Many of them wrote very long set of IF..THEN statements for each item, where I had used a loop and READ/DATA based on simlilar quizes that I saw for the Vic 20.

The other part I remember was copying a fancy "The End". When you finished the program it would run the copy I got. Basically the words "The End" would come in like a train character by character. It wasn't my code, I 'borrowed' it f rom another app and added it to my disk.  But somehow when I showed it to others, everyone seemed to think they all needed to make a fancy "The End", which wasn't really a requirement of the course, but I remember a lot of folks spent time working on it, when I just 'copied' mine.

The emulation above doesn't include the fancy "The End" but if anyone knows where it came from let me know and I'll add it.  It does contain the code (or as much as I remember it from 1993). Enjoy !



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