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
I could see how going back to BASIC could be a mental safe space. It would definitely bring me back to my childhood.
Hi there - thanks for reaching out :) Nice to meet you - my coding journey started at the age of 39 in 2016 with VB.NET. I completely missed the 1980s and 1990s era of BASIC; however, even though 30 to 40 years have passed, I still try to code in modern DOS/Windows basics like FreeBASIC and occasionally even QB64. I really like it, although to code for DOS with FreeBASIC, or GWBASIC, or QBASIC, since it’s just a hobby, I can afford it since I’m coding for fun, not money - I was told that if you start doing something for money, eventually you’ll hate it - I think I agree with that…
Yeah as soon as you start doing something for money you have to compromise your vision and it ends up just being a job like any other.