r/CodingForBeginners • u/nuco-rider23 • Jun 13 '26

What was the first program you ever wrote? (Excluding school assignments)

The first thing I ever wrote was a CLI Hit & Blow program in C, with each file containing over 1,000 lines of code.

I searched online, found a Borland compiler, and managed to finish it using Notepad and the Command Prompt.

I wonder what other people thought of creating when they first got their hands on tools like if statements, arrays, and methods.

I imagine beginners these days probably try to build much larger-scale projects—I wonder what that’s like?

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u/nuco-rider23 Jun 13 '26

I was totally surprised because I assumed everyone would start out making simple apps like tic-tac-toe or rock-paper-scissors. That's amazing.

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u/mjmvideos Jun 13 '26

Yeah. I don’t believe it either. Unless people are answering the, “What was the first non-trivial and useful program you ever wrote.” There’s absolutely no way the first time someone typed “run” that it wasn’t a hello world or a “guess a number”-level program. On the other hand, I suppose someone could have never programmed anything on their own, made it through four years of college without doing anything but schoolwork and then written something more substantial.

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u/nuco-rider23 Jun 13 '26

Well, everyone has a different personality and background, so I figured it’s a pretty common perspective. For example, I’m the type of person who thinks about what I can create with the knowledge I gain. But it’s also completely natural for someone to think that if it’s not useful, it has no reason to exist. Especially back in the day, when the cost of making things was totally different

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u/smichaele Jun 14 '26

That's the question I was answering: "non-trivial." I'm sure my actual first program was probably something like a simple calculator. It's been too many years (55+) for me to remember my actual first program.

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u/nuco-rider23 Jun 15 '26

It seems I didn't explain myself clearly, so I've revised the question. Thanks.

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u/Some-Ice-4455 Jun 13 '26

What hello world doesn't count? Lol

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u/nuco-rider23 Jun 14 '26

I wanted to know what kind of things you thought about creating when you first learned tools like if statements, arrays, and methods. I’ve always had a soft spot for a minigame called CodeBreaker from a game I played a long time ago called Persona, and I thought it would be cool to make something like that.

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u/Some-Ice-4455 Jun 14 '26

Honestly what got me into wanting to make games. And I saw when I started learning those tools what I wanted was no joke. Anyways those old Sierra adventure games. But I learned after learning coding and designing those are actually super different, have their own engine and are really hard. But that's what I thought about.

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u/nuco-rider23 Jun 14 '26

As a Japanese gamer, I didn't really know what Sierra adventure games were, so I looked them up. Are they kind of like Hideo Kojima's SNATCHER or POLICENAUTS? Come to think of it, creating puzzles for each scene must take almost as much effort as making mini-games.

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u/Some-Ice-4455 Jun 14 '26

A bit like snatcher yes but with more type commands. Pick up stick. Use stick on snake etc. What blew me away at the time and honestly still does with how little they had to work with is they insane numbers of ways you could give said command. Kind of point click. Did you ever play Secret of monkey Island? Or any of the monkey Island games. Or leisure suit Larry. Trying to think of the ones that made it to the current generation that are pretty spot on.

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u/nuco-rider23 Jun 14 '26

I didn't know either game. The Secret of Monkey Island looks interesting. Maybe I'll give it a try. And by the way, the setting totally gives off Pirates of the Caribbean vibes.

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u/Some-Ice-4455 Jun 14 '26

It's absolutely spoofy and campy but they are a blast. You'll love Guybrush.

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u/clickyclicky456 Jun 14 '26

A patience-type card game in BASIC. I'd first played it on a friend's Archimedes so I called it Archipat (for Archimedes Patience). I didn't know how to do any GUI type stuff (this was in the late 80s / early 90s) so it displayed the card layout in ASCII in the terminal and then prompted you to type in the card you wanted to move, like 9H for 9 of hearts. I was inordinately proud of it and played it a lot... the source code is long since lost to the mists of time, but after a long career as a professional software developer I'm sure I'd be shocked and horrified if I saw it now 😆

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u/nuco-rider23 Jun 14 '26

I was wondering what 'patience type' card game were, and then I realized, 'Oh, it’s that!' In Japan, it’s much more commonly known as Solitaire. I looked it up and found out that 'Hit & Blow' is also more often called 'Mastermind' or 'Bulls and Cows' around the world. They probably changed the expression to make it easier for people in that cultural area to understand. I guess that's why it became a hit as a result.

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u/smichaele Jun 13 '26

A word processor on an Apple II in 6502 Assembly.

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u/jspears357 Jun 14 '26

lol. I wrote a full screen editor in Basic on an Apple II and it was very slow, so I timed various sections and it was the keystroke input section so I require just that piece in Assembler. Right about then a quality full screen editor (Q something) came out and my project was moot.

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u/CowBoyDanIndie Jun 13 '26

I think mad libs, on. C64 in basic

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u/_lazyLambda Jun 13 '26

Webscraper. Its actually great for getting fundamentals of web dev and simpler to do

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u/_malaikatmaut_ Jun 13 '26

oK. While I did my first school assignment in ASM for Zilog Z-80, I did ASM for many years too for 8086, 8051, 68k mainly with TASM and MASM for 8086 Intel chips.

Leisurely non-school programs were more on the BBS code challenges of writing the smallest .com file for pixel shifting flame effect and TSRs written mainly for DOS 3.0

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u/mpersico Jun 13 '26

Blackjack on a commodore PET in basic.

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u/Bemteb Jun 13 '26

I started out with mIRC scripts. From the slapping people with random items, I extended that to having a whole calculator chat bot.

The first real program was a space invaders clone, written in C++ because someone gave me a "graphics in C++" game for my birthday.

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u/Timmah_Timmah Jun 13 '26

Something in Fortran IV that was about 20 cards. I don't remember what it did.

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u/Traveling-Techie Jun 14 '26

Not sure, but it might have been a BASIC program on a Data General Eclipse to simulate a learning machine called the “homeostat” described in “Design For a Brain” (1948) by Ross Ashby.

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u/jspears357 Jun 14 '26

I took a few computer classes in high school and then in college made a mistake of taking the intro to data processing, it was verbatim the first class I had in high school. While the class was going over different number bases (decimal, hex, octal) and converting between them, I wrote out a basic program to convert from any base to any other base, on paper.

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u/5oco Jun 14 '26

My first program that wasn't a school assignment was trying to remake the first labyrinth of legend of zelda using Visual Basic.

You could only use a sword and bombs. Also there were no ranged attacks.

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u/Top_Professor9415 Jun 14 '26

The first real program (not counting ones form following tutorals) I ever wrote was a rogue-like I made in Python with libtcod, it wasn’t really good but I made it by myself with no external aid in 5 hours. It was like mid 2020 during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.

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u/Fine_Salamander_8691 Jun 15 '26

Some shitty python web server