This mightn’t be a big deal to most people but it’s a huge deal to me. If my parents hadn’t got me a ZX Spectrum in 1982, I wouldn’t have had the life I’ve had. No exaggeration. Every single college and career choice I’ve made stems from the skills I learned on that machine, which I still have (the machine, not the skills :-) ).
Sure 50% of the time I was playing Jet Set Willy and Sabre Wulf but on the Speccy I learned BASIC, Forth and Z80 assembler. I also learned the basic architecture of computers and basic electronics circuits.
I still crank up emulators on my PCs, phone and Palm and still get annoyed over the bugs in the games I wrote!
Thanks to my parents for realising how important computer skills might be to me and to Sir Clive Sinclair for having the clarity of vision to create the ZX series of computers. I’m actually surprised he didn’t come up with the OLPC as it is right in line with his thinking.
Happy Anniversary Speccy!
p.s and just in time, the 1988 Edition of the Your Sinclair Rock n Roll Years has just been released!
UPDATE 1: Colin Woodcock has also just released a Special 25th Anniversary Edition of the wonderful ZXF online magazine.
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