30 years ago was right around the time I wrote JPEG viewing software so I could look at JPEGs on my computer. :) I mean, I got the actual JPEG decoding from whatever the standard open source implementation was at the time, but then paired it up with my own code to display to my graphics card, which could handle a rather fancy 32K colors. Then I could view JPEGs downloaded from Usenet.
Those were my college years. Prior to that, in the mid-80s I developed in Forth / 6502 assembly on my Commodore 128 at home, and QBASIC (sigh) on IBM PCs at work. After college, we were programming in C++ on Gateway PC clones -- had one at work, and a slightly less powerful one at home. A helpful co-worker introduced me to Perl, which quickly became an essential tool for me. Around this time we finally had version control software, but it was terrible.
Those were my college years. Prior to that, in the mid-80s I developed in Forth / 6502 assembly on my Commodore 128 at home, and QBASIC (sigh) on IBM PCs at work. After college, we were programming in C++ on Gateway PC clones -- had one at work, and a slightly less powerful one at home. A helpful co-worker introduced me to Perl, which quickly became an essential tool for me. Around this time we finally had version control software, but it was terrible.