I first dipped my toes into programming at the age of (I can't remember precisely) 10-13 with MS Visual Basic. That would have been 1995-1998, which spans the time that VB5 was released, but I'm pretty sure I was using VB4. I was flying solo, self-teaching, without anyone around who knew what I wanted to learn, so asked lots of questions on the internet and was educated by anonymous strangers. That would become a trend so solid that it would define part of who I am. I've been feeling nostalgic about that and I've been trying to look up my old posts from back then and see what kind of stupid questions little me was asking, but I can't remember where I was asking them.

I have found traces of myself later in 2002 when I was in high school, asking questions about VB6 on vbforums.com, but I don't think (not positive) that is where I asked my earlier questions. I think maybe that forum didn't exist back then? Whois data says it was registered in 2000, but I have seen some people who are members since 1999. I have a whisp of a memory thread that's telling me the forum was called MSDN but that was also the name of the documentation CD package that came with Visual Studio, so maybe I'm confused. Was there a MSDN forum back then? Newsgroup maybe? I'm not sure I was asking questions on an actual forum as we know it today.

If anyone has insight on where I might find myself, or what to feed wayback machine, I would appreciate it.

 

MSDN was on CD(s) delivered with the product... https://archive.org/search?query=msdn

also long before internet became the marketplace of the ideas, people were using magazines. it worked much the same way (feedback columns) but was of course much slower.

 

You are making me feel old.

MSDN is Microsoft Developers Network and a lot of things used that name, I do think there was a MIcrosoft-hosted support site with it. But books and magazines were still way high on the list of resources for learning.

 

Is it possible you were using Usenet newsgroups?

That's how I first got into interacting on line and it was in about the 1995 time frame.

 

I definitely wasn't asking in magazines, it was on the internet for sure. I don't remember my own username, but I do remember the username of one person who responded quite often to my questions and was polite when others were jerks; his name was "yonatan."

 

Is it possible you were using Usenet newsgroups?

That's how I first got into interacting on line and it was in about the 1995 time frame.

Yes it is possible. I did use newgroups around and before that time for other things but I want to say this was a forum. I could be wrong.

 

initially i was using IRC, newsgroups (and magazines, collections of code examples that ware distributed on CDs, often attached to the computer magazine...). then internet forums came along. not sure when places like https://www.vbforums.com/ appeared

 

Is it possible you were using Usenet newsgroups?

That's how I first got into interacting on line and it was in about the 1995 time frame.

That's likely, I had a uucp site SMA2 and a usenet C-news node in the 80's, 90's. We would often gateway specific usenet groups in/out of our own forums/BBS systems.

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.mail.maps/c/VUFn0eX_8j0?pli=1

#N glacier
#S ALR 486/33, SCO Unix 3.2
#O private
#C Harold C. Nevis
#E h...@glacier.rain.com
#T xx
#P xx
#L xx
#U reed
#W glacier!hcn (Harold C. Nevis); Sun May 23 01:40:09 PDT 1993
#W Tim Rosmus <tro...@nwnexus.com>; Mon Mar 10 14:18:16 PST 1997
#W (PNW Region UUCP Map maintainer)
#R A free public access system
#
glacier = glacier.rain.com
glacier m2xenix(DIRECT), busker(DIRECT), qiclab(DIRECT),
percival(DIRECT), bucket(DIRECT), sma2(DIRECT)

 

You are making me feel old.

I was only trying to make myself feel old, sorry for putting you in the cross-fire!

 

I don't feel old. I am just plain old. I was programming in VB3 for a very long time, one of my favorite platforms at the time. Everything was so "basic" and intuitive back then.

 

I don't feel old. I am just plain old. I was programming in VB3 for a very long time, one of my favorite platforms at the time. Everything was so "basic" and intuitive back then.

I was mainly using the same language then I'm using now, C. It's not old, it's a classic.

 

I first dipped my toes into programming at the age of (I can't remember precisely) 10-13 with MS Visual Basic. That would have been 1995-1998, which spans the time that VB5 was released, but I'm pretty sure I was using VB4. I was flying solo, self-teaching, without anyone around who knew what I wanted to learn, so asked lots of questions on the internet and was educated by anonymous strangers. That would become a trend so solid that it would define part of who I am. I've been feeling nostalgic about that and I've been trying to look up my old posts from back then and see what kind of stupid questions little me was asking, but I can't remember where I was asking them.

I have found traces of myself later in 2002 when I was in high school, asking questions about VB6 on vbforums.com, but I don't think (not positive) that is where I asked my earlier questions. I think maybe that forum didn't exist back then? Whois data says it was registered in 2000, but I have seen some people who are members since 1999. I have a whisp of a memory thread that's telling me the forum was called MSDN but that was also the name of the documentation CD package that came with Visual Studio, so maybe I'm confused. Was there a MSDN forum back then? Newsgroup maybe? I'm not sure I was asking questions on an actual forum as we know it today.

If anyone has insight on where I might find myself, or what to feed wayback machine, I would appreciate it.

You're probably thinking of the old "MSDN Forums" which was closed off, no longer updated but apparently still searchable in some way.

I used it a great deal, particularly in the early days of C# and .Net. I asked a lot of questions back then and there was quite a lot of helpful activity, but I think the site as such, is gone.

It's URL was: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-us

 

Is it possible you were using Usenet newsgroups?

That's how I first got into interacting on line and it was in about the 1995 time frame.

Chat rooms, or IRC, were a great Source of knowledge and insight at that time. I learned a lot during that time period.

 

Bulletin boards in the 80s.

 

I don't feel old. I am just plain old. I was programming in VB3 for a very long time, one of my favorite platforms at the time. Everything was so "basic" and intuitive back then.

VB3 was my start into Windows programming. I had done a few QuickBasic things under DOS and seeing W3.11 was like a religious experience!.

I paid AFAIR $200 hard earned cash for the disk set to VB3. Worked it to death learning how to make Windows apps. Bought the v4, v5, and v6 upgrades as they came along too, but they were less expensive.

Was it VB6 that came with the Control Creation features built in? That was my favorite anyway.

And as it happens, at my job we still write test programs in VB5 to maintain compatibility with code written 20 or 30 years back.