[dogscoff]

I used to spend hours writing spaghetti code in AMOS- a bulky but easy version of Basic for my old Amiga. I was entirely self-taught, but I taught myself to use procedures/ functions rather than GOTOs (although I never understood how or why I should pass a parameter to a procedure).

I used to produce some really cool scrolltexts and joystick-driven animated menus for compilations of (other people's) games, with lots of neat home-pixelled graphics/ fonts with brilliant dance music by a friend of mine, who used Fasttracker or Octamed or something similar. It was spaghetti code, it was all entirely unplanned (I always had a vision of how I wanted it to look, but never knew how to plan code- just started typing) but it all worked. Some of it was fairly sophisticated, too. I remember I had one scrolltext that went from the bottom of the screen to the top, casting a shadow-text beneath moving at a third the speed. All the while I had a 2-player "Tron" game running on the other half of the screen.

Then I got a girlfriend.


I'd love to look back over those programs. Unfortunately all the data is on floppy, and PCs won't read amiga floppies, even with emulators.