Other side of me

Having journeyed extensively and blogged about my trips, I decided on a rather different trip this time. A trip to my childhood.

Here are the programs I will talk about. DOS based so might have compatibility problems. Click Here to Download  

(Extract and run the executable bstprogs.exe  in the same folder)

I was waiting expectantly as my brother was typing furiously on Dad's latest 386. Dad was working for the Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board. He had his office in the basement of our house where there were five computers. A TVS dot marix printer was connected to the 386 on which my brother had been working for the past one hour. This printer was used to print electricity bills. Once every three months, it would work continuously for about a week, day in and day out, making one hell of a racket and spitting out sheafs of bills. If you had ever seen a dot matrix printer at work, you would agree that sleeping next to railway tracks would be far better.

The year was 1995 and I was 10 years old.

“What are you going to do?”, I asked bro when he was entering the office with a fat book in his hand with a large 'C' inscribed over the cover.

“Programming”, he answered curtly.

“What?”, I asked confused.

“Hmmm... writing a program, like that game you played last week”, he said and my eyes lit up.

The previous week I had played the brick game, a game in which a bouncing ball smashes a brick wall above it, some bricks being magical giving special powers like the ablity to shoot or rip through the wall. I loved it but unfortunately it got erased and my brother could never load it again because the small floppy got corrupted. I was devastated.

So the moment he said 'game' I decided to wait for him to complete it.

After two hours, during which I brought coffee at least five times, he uttered a joyous cry and I stood up to have a closer look.

“Run” he typed.

The screen cleared and a single line appeared:

“Bank Account Number?”

I stood staring at the screen expecting the ball and bricks to pop up. But all it was showing were lines like “Interest?”, “Mortgage?”, "Balance: 4356" etc etc.

“Ok I am done”, said my brother switching off the computer taking me by surprise.

“What! Where is the game?”, I asked flabbergasted.

“What game?”, he asked looking at me, amused.

“You said you were making a game like the one I played last week”, close to tears, I reminded him.

“Oh God! No way. It takes a team and lots of time to do that. I was writing a banking appli....”

I started crying.

All I knew was I was cheated into getting him coffee and wasting my two hours there instead of playing cricket. It was 6'O clock and cricket would have ended. I cried harder.

“I want a game, a game. Please make at least a simple game”, I cried dropping out the bricks from my imagination and settling for a bouncing ball.

“No chance, its too tough”, he said dragging me out of the room.

“Just a moving circle....”, I managed to say before he slammed the office door shut and locked it.

I stared at the locked door and the dark sky, no computer game and no cricket, I burst out crying louder than ever.

I owe my school, Jubilee Hills Public School, a lot. In 6^th, we were taught LOGO in which a cursor called turtle responded to commands like FD, BK, RT, LT moving across the screen leaving a trail behind it. I drew circles, rectangles and tons of fancy figures. Later, in 7^th and 8^th, we were taught BASIC, Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Language when my desire to make a game was ignited. But after extensive research, I learnt that the task was almost impossible in BASIC. Following my brother's advice I learnt C when I was in 10^th.

Six months later I was able to fulfill my dream and well actually do more than that.

Click Here To Download (Extract and run bstprogs.exe)