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Rediscovering BASIC programming — how retro coding helps me find focus and peace (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by ron77@lemmy.world to c/programming@programming.dev

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Hey everyone,

I’m Ronen — I’m a hobbyist programmer, poet, and game dev enthusiast from Israel. I grew up in the 80s and 90s when BASIC was many people’s first window into programming and imagination.

These days, I’m rediscovering that old magic through retro-style BASIC projects — small text and DOS-like games, creative experiments, and tutorials — and I’m sharing them on my YouTube channel: youtube.com/@ron77-r5l

But this journey is more than just coding for me. I live with mental health challenges, and programming — especially in the simplicity of BASIC — has become a kind of therapy: it helps me focus, calm down, and build something meaningful even on difficult days.

I’m not here just to promote, but to connect. If anyone else finds comfort, focus, or healing in programming, I’d love to hear your experiences too. How has coding helped you through life challenges or tough mental states?

Thank you for letting me share a bit about myself — and if you want to see some of my BASIC experiments or talk retro dev, I’d be really happy to connect.

Ronen

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[–] xxce2AAb@feddit.dk 1 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I have fond memories of transcribing reams of machine code encoded as BASIC data statements with a small prefixed loader out of the computer mags of the day. My mother would dictate and I would laboriously type, byte by byte. She... had the patience of a saint. I doubt she ever understood what we were doing or why.

I was probably not an entirely typical child.

[–] ron77@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Yes, well, I guess you can say that also about me, kinda - not entirely typical childhood and not typical life :S In a sense, I'm lucky to be able to code, as I know some excellent programmers who, once they got mentally ill, could not code anymore

[–] xxce2AAb@feddit.dk 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Given BASIC is what you enjoy, here's something else that might tickle your fancy: A while ago, there was this movement to revive not just the programming experience of the early microcomputers, but also create a similarly limited but easy to understand execution environment (though suitably modernized to make things less complicated). It was called 'fantasy consoles'. The idea is essentially to make some simple emulated hardware that never existed in real life and let people see what they could make with it. Quite a lot, as it turns out.

I suspect you'd get a lot of enjoyment out of playing with something like PICO-8.

There's a fair amount of demoscene productions for it as well.

[–] ron77@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wow! Thanks! I will explore it when I get the chance - who knows, I might even upload a YouTube video about it :D

[–] xxce2AAb@feddit.dk 1 points 1 month ago

If you do, I'd love it if you DM'ed me a link to it. I'd enjoy watching that.