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

  • Blaster M@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    20 hours ago

    If I went back to BASIC, I’d be using modern programming practices still - No Gotos, All Subs

    • ron77@lemmy.worldOP
      6·
      19 hours ago

      Yep, that’s what you have in FreeBASIC subs (void functions) and functions (that return a value). FreeBASIC is actually C programming in disguise; it’s C with basic syntax and very powerful, plus any C library can be used with it (you just need to have the correct .bi header file for it)