I still remember the thrill I felt when I wrote my first basic program on BBC Micro at school. It was a simple four-line program that drew a triangle on the screen. In the early 1980s we enjoyed playing games like Chuckie Egg and the famous Granny’s Garden on BBC Micro, which was the first computer we ever met, but the real thrill was getting the computer to perform tasks in the basic programming language. Simple programs that drew shapes or printed text on the screen weren’t exactly groundbreaking, but they were enough to whet my appetite for programming and lead me to programming games on other computers like Spectrum, Atari ST, and Amiga.
In the good old days of the Spectrum, you could buy magazines that featured pre-written games in basic code that you could write on your own Spectrum and hope the program would perform well. This was a great way to learn how the code works and what commands do what. Books on basic programming were also released that would walk you through the basics of commands and structure, and you would end up programming a full game. The satisfaction of making things happen was amazing.
So what are the benefits of learning to program computers? In my personal experience, it gives you a sense of accomplishment to create a complete program from scratch and see it work. Figuring out how to get the computer to do something is a challenge as you try to decide how you are going to do it. The thrill of being able to create your own game in which you say the rules. The joy of other people playing it.
Programming is good for the mind as it involves problem solving. For example: how to make various sprites move around the screen and throw bullets like the famous game Space Invaders. What to do if a player does something unexpected and the game crashes, how to tell the computer how to deal with these unexpected events. I once spent over a week programming a zoom feature on an art pack that I wrote, which gave me a great sense of relief when I finally got it up and running.
Programming can also be a lot of fun and a great hobby. I met some good friends when I was writing programming tutorials for various Atari ST record magazines in the 1990s, who I still listen to to this day. We sent each other discs filled with programming tools and routines and looked forward to the many programs we could create where we were limited only by our imaginations. Our creations were reviewed in the best Amiga and ST magazines of the day, something we all looked forward to.
Finally, programming can become a good source of income for you. Creating your own programs can become a reality with the great programming languages available, such as the App Game Kit, which allows you to create software that runs on multiple devices. People always want new software, and employers need to find programmers to create it.
There are many game building software on the market that require no programming at all, but I personally find them limiting. If you want to create your own games or applications, I highly recommend that you get stuck in some good old coding with one of the popular programming languages on the market today.