In 2020, while South Africa was in the middle of the COVID-19 lockdown, I was in my final year of middle school. My cousin, who was taking IT in high school, introduced me to the world of programming.

I was immediately hooked. I spent countless afternoons debugging and dedicated my Sundays to sitting with my dad, piecing together the logic for this game. It was my first ever project, built using Delphi(Pascal) - the standard in the South African school system. This project didn't just result in a game; it sparked the passion for software development that I still carry to this day.

• Language: Delphi(pascal)
• IDE: RAD Studio / Delphi
• Platform: Windows VCL Application

• Two-Player Logic: Classic X vs O gameplay.
• Win Detection: Hard-coded because I was a newbie.
• Singleplayer & Multiplayer: Randomized AI
• Themes: Because I thought it was cool.
• Input validation: Ensures only valid moves.

We all start somewhere. Before I understood clean code, I practiced "Creative Logic". Here are some of my favorite artifacts from the original source code:

Why use a single character when you can reserve space for five? I clearly didn't know anything about datatypes and sizes.

var
    varChar:string[5]

My "Shift" key was working overtime, but only half the time. I pioneered a new style of "Schrödinger’s Case Sensitivity" - where BEGIN is loud, but Begin is polite, and Procedure is fancy.

procedure pToggleValue();
BEGIN
  if varChar = 'X' then varChar := 'O' ELSE varChar := 'X';
END;

Procedure pCheckWin (Out IsWinner:Boolean);
Begin

I was totally unaware that case (Switch) statements existed, leading to only a "few" if statements.

In case I forgot what I just wrote only a few centimetres to the left, I made sure to clarify it for my future self. This is peak documentation.

Screen.Cursor := crHourGlass;                                                 //cursor := crHourglass