This is a fun thread.

I can't remember my very first program (although it probably resembled the one Ovid posted) but I can remember one of the ones I wrote around then which was based on those 'choose your own adventure' books. It was a story that took you through a haunted house and presented you with two choices after each chunk of narrative. There was one correct path that took you to the treasure and many, many ways to die--if you made a wrong turn you'd die, but you might not die until you'd made 20 more choices.

It was pretty simple code, consisting of little other than a few sounds, prints--and gotos: it was horrible spaghetti code. I'd allot myself 200 lines for finishing up a dying branch, and then decide to string things along, so I'd make line 210 (the right thread) goto another 200 lines ahead, and make line 200 (the wrong thread) goto 220, and continue until I hit 400 and then realize I needeed more space... I can remember having a piece of paper that just consisted of line numbers and a note as to what thread was being picked up there.

For some reason I stopped writing programs after that and didn't write any until high school, where I encountered a teacher who was obsessed with flow charts. The agony I suffered in that class kept me away from programming for several more years.

In reply to (kudra: spaghetti) RE: What was your first program? by kudra
in thread What was your first program? by Ovid

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.