The first video game programmers was a young woman who had recently graduated from high school. Her name is Joyce Weisbecker. She is known as the first female commercial video game designer - two years before Carol Shaw's work for Atari .
At the time, consumer electronics RCA released the Studio II, a programmable video game console that, along with the Fairchild Channel F, pioneered the use of ROM cartridges as interchangeable game media.
The technology began in 1969 as a personal computer created by Joseph Weisbecker. His daughter, Joyce, learned how to code video games, accomplishing it without ever being on staff at RCA. She considers herself as the first indie developer, given that she did her work as an independent contractor.
"I know there were no other women at RCA doing the programming," she said. "A couple of guys did and they were employees. I think I was the only person outside the company that actually got paid to do a video game. So I was the first contractor . . . and possibly the first independent video game developer, because I came up with the idea and pitched it, and they said okay."
After graduating high school, In the summer of 1976, while she was on break before her first semester at Rider University, Joseph asked her if she wanted to program video games for RCA.
Having knowledge and some experience from learning how to program from her father's prototypes, she started programming for the RCA Cosmac VIP, the inexpensive commercial computer kit. Her first creations were Snake Race and Jackpot. Her first commercial game was TV Schoolhouse I, a quiz game for the RCA II that she programmed in a week in August 1976. She was paid for $290.
Then in October 1976, Joyce programmed two action games: Speedway and Tag. Then in 1977, Joyce programmed three games: Slide, Sum Fun, and Sequence Shoot.