In 1992, during a school exhibition, I saw a student presenting a program that visualized the Mandelbrot set. I was instantly captivated — it felt like a lightning bolt of inspiration. I knew I had to write something like that myself.
After a few weeks of learning and experimenting, I managed to complete the first version of my own Mandelbrot viewer. It ran on my IBM PS/1 Model 2011, equipped with a 286 CPU and VGA graphics.
I named it GTFractals, and it quickly became a constant companion throughout my journey into the world of computing. Over the years, I rewrote it in various languages and platforms: Turbo C++ for MS-DOS, Visual Basic for Windows 3.x and 9x, .NET for Windows XP and later, Cocoa/Objective-C for macOS, and even Swift for iOS.
Unfortunately, the original Turbo Pascal source code — which I kept lovingly (though perhaps a bit recklessly) on floppy disks — was eventually lost.
What I'm sharing here now is a faithful recreation of that very first version, written in Turbo Pascal 6, as close as possible to how it looked and behaved back in 1992.
This simple program isn't just about drawing fractals — it tells a bit of my personal story. 🧡
PS: Please mind that the source code shared here is intended to be as close as possible to what I wrote in 1992, so pretend to read the code written by a 13/14 year old kid in the early 90s :-)