When I started programming, computers were slow, unreliable, and not very portable so it was far more efficient to write notes by hand than on the computer. Here are a few samples from some of the many dozens of pages of notes I wrote down during my formative hacking years.

Hangman

The first few pages from an early (1980) attempt at writing a program to play "hangman" on the Commodore PET.

While the graphics capabilities of the Commodore PET were fairly limited, creating any program that used graphics was still a daunting task because there were no utilities to help you.

More hangman source code.

I like these pages because they look like they're older than the Dead Sea scrolls.

Dig the crude graphic gallows.

Tic-Tac-Toe

Although I never did manage to put all the logic into it that I wanted to, this Tic-Tac-Toe program was still smart enough to beat my 10-year-old sister for a while until she learned its weaknesses.

The page on the right shows my attempt at determining all of the possible scenarios so I could write logic to deal with them.

6502 Assembly

When I got my Commodore 64 I began learning 6502 assembly language.

This pseudo-code is from an editor I wrote that was part of an implementation of John Conway's game of Life.

Hacking and Cracking

Let's just say these are some notes I took while creatively "reverse-engineering" some software I had "acquired" through "dubious channels," if you know what I mean.

The page on the right shows a typical list of software along with my notes for where to store it. You wouldn't know it from these notes but I had a very good filing system.

Map I made while playing a game to figure out the layout. (I don't remember the name but it may have been Aztec Warrior.)