I was in school, and I remember my 1993. Our school was one of the few schools in my hometown (north-east India) that got computers.
Unfortunately, we had too many students for each computer during classes. I started a revolt that “Computers are wasting our study time, as our upcoming board exams are more important.” The whole class signed the petition and the School Head had to schedule a class-wide talk and agreed to make it totally optional to the point of, “If you really want, you be part of it. But yes, study for the exam is more important.”
So, the computer classes ended up with just me (the traitor), a friend from Kerala, and the school head’s daughter. We ended up like 3 computers each to our disposal. I wrote a QBasic Game-ish program to impress my first girlfriend — she uses the arrow keys to launch dots to hit some area on a heart-shaped thingy on the screen and it prints her name. I remember using physical graph-paper to calculate the screen “pixels” (I think) or co-ordinates to calculate strike areas.
Oh and Yes, almost all of my classmates remember me for being that traitor.
Were computers common in schools in India in the early 90s? I was born in 1993, so this is a bit early from my time, but when I was in a (government) school computers started appearing in the early 2000s. They became common in households way later, probably around the late 2000s.
Also funny that your name clicked something in my head to check your profile, and yep you're indeed the Flash guy!
Back in the 2005-2010 era I was making Flash games as a hobby and used to browse a bunch of related forums/sites (flashkit, gotoAndPlay) for tutorials. Your name always stuck out since you're one of the few Indians who were well known for their expertise :)
Yes, Computers in the 90s were rare in India and even rarer in the North-Eastern region. I took every opportunity to be around computers during school and college days, mostly helping out pro bono. I might have visited and helped almost every commercial establishment with computers in my town. Fortunately, I also had a weird cousin, much older than me, who reads and talks about some of the weirdest things in the world. He had a computer in his study room in the early 90s. I was, I think, the only person allowed to touch his computer. Around the time when the Internet was launched in India (Aug 15, 1995), he told me that the world would soon become all connected with computers, “Imagine working for a company in the USA, while sitting in your home in India. Learn the Internet.” My ultimate goal during college was to leave that town as soon as I could. I started to understand all of his ramblings and weirdness as truths way later in life. btw, the Internet reached that town only around the mid-2000s and was an ultimate luxury.
Ah! Flash. Yes, I was lucky to be there. Invited inside Macromedia (first from India, and I think only one too for that thingy), listened to Gary Grossman talking about ActionScript, and worked with the whoswho of Flash at that time. Got my name listed in the Flash IDE’s credits roll, and all that Jazz. ;-)
Ah that tracks with my experience later too. Even in the mainland, computers were pretty rare for us regular folk. Early in the 2000's, my father for whatever reason assumed computers would be hugely influential in the future and borrowed money to buy one for us. Mostly meant for my older sibling who was in high school, it didn't take his interest but worked its charm on me hah.
And thanks for the pictures! I was a kid during this time, so had no contact with any professionals. Just other kids on various places like Newgrounds and other forums. I remember emailing Armor Games and Miniclip for sponsorship for my shoddy games and understandably not receiving a reply ;)
Nostalgic see to those giant beige CRT computers, that damn copy of Flash MX and people just goofing off haha.
If you were into Flash, you would realize that the people you see in the pictures are Colin Mook, Branden Hall (you’d have definitely read their books), Aral Balkan, Flashguru (aka Guy Watson), Jesse Warden, and (forgotten the names of the few others).
Unfortunately, we had too many students for each computer during classes. I started a revolt that “Computers are wasting our study time, as our upcoming board exams are more important.” The whole class signed the petition and the School Head had to schedule a class-wide talk and agreed to make it totally optional to the point of, “If you really want, you be part of it. But yes, study for the exam is more important.”
So, the computer classes ended up with just me (the traitor), a friend from Kerala, and the school head’s daughter. We ended up like 3 computers each to our disposal. I wrote a QBasic Game-ish program to impress my first girlfriend — she uses the arrow keys to launch dots to hit some area on a heart-shaped thingy on the screen and it prints her name. I remember using physical graph-paper to calculate the screen “pixels” (I think) or co-ordinates to calculate strike areas.
Oh and Yes, almost all of my classmates remember me for being that traitor.
https://brajeshwar.com/2025/fixing-a-dos-computer-for-the-ar...