30 Days Of Geek – Greatest App To Date

Oh man, the greatest “app” I ever coded was in Primary School.

It was a Magic Eight Ball. On an Amstrad CPC. Written in BASIC.

So, other kids would sit down at the computer and ask it stupid questions. And it’d give back stupid answers.

I quickly got told by the teachers it was causing problems, with bullying, when it was no more than coding up what “asking an eraser” with things written on it did.

I mean, it was essentially a toy. It no more enabled bullying than putting kids together in a room full of stuff, but it was easy to blame the tool.

So, I kept hacking on it, and had it hold an array of names; if you typed in someone’s name, it would return only compliments about said person. And it even got a logic kludge so you couldn’t “Not” or “Triple Not” it.

Essentially, I coded a chat bot, in BASIC, by hand, on an Amstrad, in primary school.

Oh, and for #30DaysOfGeek, I got too busy with my day yesterday to talk about my day job; what I’m going to do is do make-ups of any days / questions I miss at the end, cause it’s about finding the time daily to do a little blog post, you know?

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