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What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)

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Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)

#231

Post by syockit »

jnty wrote: post #49
fiftyacorn wrote: post #38

You would visit the relevant bullet board, then post a question and get a response like RTFM. Then spend the afternoon staring into space

Oh never mind, I solved it, thanks!

That reminds me of that one XKCD strip.

Sometimes, after figuring out the answer, I would want to post it as a new reply to the thread, but then I'd have to register as a new user to a forum which I don't know if I'd ever visit again, or sometimes the thread was archived and didn't allow new replies. Even if I managed to, I'd soon be reprimanded by the moderators for necromancing the thread.

Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)

#232

Post by alanbernstein »

throwanem wrote: post #155
gwbas1c wrote: post #88

It's really not Stack Overflow that we should be asking about, it's Google. Programming became a lot easier when you could just type a question into Google and it would find that someone asked the same question in some forum or newsgroup. In 2003 Google would always include results in a site called Experts' Exchange, which was basically an earlier version of Stack Overflow. What was different, though, before Google,…

> Experts' Exchange, which was basically an earlier version of Stack Overflow Expert Sex Change was garbage , though. If it hadn't been as terrible as it was throughout its life, Stack Overflow wouldn't have taken off nearly as easily or as well as it did. I mean, I like to grouse as much as the next graybeard over how SO has gone downhill - and it has - but it's still miles and miles better than the metaphorical and…

What's your problem with the current state of SO?

Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)

#233

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

jslabovitz wrote: post #69

I'm self-taught, and now in my 50s. I started programming when I was 10, in 1976. In those earliest days of consumer-class computers, there wasn't really a developed market for practical programming books. However, the manuals that came with software or OSes were quite well-written. There were a few magazines, too, like BYTE and Dr. Dobbs Journal, that published source code -- always the best way to learn! It helped,…

Also of similar vintage. True story about learning C on an Atari ST:

I bought a cheap compiler, tried to use one of the standard library functions, couldn't work out why it wasn't working.

Used the debugger to single-step through the 68k machine code it had generated. Still couldn't see why it wasn't working, because what it was doing didn't make sense.

Typed out a letter - dot-matrix printed on paper - and posted it, with an envelope and a stamp and all, to the compiler manufacturer.

Got a letter back - hand-typed on headed note paper and signed with a pen - saying: "Sorry, we haven't implemented that function yet."

Whole cycle took about two weeks.

I prefer having SO, Google and GitHub to work with.

Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)

#234

Post by sitkack »

DonHopkins wrote: post #104
jslabovitz wrote: post #69

I'm self-taught, and now in my 50s. I started programming when I was 10, in 1976. In those earliest days of consumer-class computers, there wasn't really a developed market for practical programming books. However, the manuals that came with software or OSes were quite well-written. There were a few magazines, too, like BYTE and Dr. Dobbs Journal, that published source code -- always the best way to learn! It helped,…

I loved Dr. Dobb's Journal too, and I also really looked forward to each delicious issue of Creative Computing as a kid! Like so many others, I read the Adventure source code and typed in the Star Trek source code. I also loved all the Beagle Bros software and programming tools, and especially their catalogs and ads. (And NO, they were definitely NOT "Brogrammers", they were freaks!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bea…

Dear Lazyweb, if someone comes across the "Dr. Dobb's Developer Library DVD" please donate a copy to the Internet Archive. I contacted the new owners of Dr. Dobbs (UBM) and they actually sold the last version they had. No backup. Weren't interested in selling any more copies.

http://www.drdobbs.com/tools

Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)

#235

Post by throwanem »

alanbernstein wrote: post #232
throwanem wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Experts' Exchange, which was basically an earlier version of Stack Overflow Expert Sex Change was garbage , though. If it hadn't been as terrible as it was throughout its life, Stack Overflow wouldn't have taken off nearly as easily or as well as it did. I mean, I like to grouse as much as the next graybeard over how SO has gone downhill - and it has - but it's still miles and miles better than the metaphorical and…

What's your problem with the current state of SO?

It's full of people who can't be bothered to do even the most trivial investigation into their own damn bugs - the same trivial "I didn't configure it lol" and "I have no idea what I'm doing, nor interest in developing one, fix my thing for me plz" bugs that the site already has a dozen answers for. It stays that way because volunteer moderators don't want to wade through sewage all day. So it goes.

The topic-specific SE sites are often better; Emacs.SE, just off the top, is consistently of very high quality, with maintainers of several high-profile packages and Emacs itself regularly active there. But I abandoned any attempt to participate on SO proper years ago, and rarely even check there except on the off chance that some weird exception has an obvious cause that'll save me a source dive on a library or some similar large investment of time.

Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)

#236

Post by throwanem »

jaredsohn wrote: post #172
ryanmarsh wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember joking with colleagues back then about sourceexchange.com and how that sounded out loud.

penisland was another famous site from the time with this property. Edit: It was a site that sold pens; I think the alternative pronunciation of their domain name was unintentional. Edit 2: I think I was wrong. Snopes says they did sell pens but they chose the name intentionally: http://www.snopes.com/business/names/domains.asp . Some other such names from that link: powergenitalia.com, molestationnursery.com, and wh…

Snopes talks about penisland.net, which is still up now and clearly a joke - a rather disappointing effort, in fact, with a few rather broad double entendres and nothing further to offer.

I was curious about the (presumably) original .com, which is now squatted, and about which there seems no historical information easily to be found.

Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)

#239

Post by ivanhoe »

Before SO we had usenet groups, and later forums, so you'd ask those same questions and someone would help, pretty much like SO just on a smaller scale. Also back then we actually RTFM, and manuals usually included source examples so you'd figure out from it how to do the basic stuff and then worked your way from there by trial & error. Borland's Delphi had one of the best manuals I've ever used, to the day. And it was much slower and harder to learn it (but also you'd get broader knowledge than today).

Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)

#240

Post by defined »

musesum wrote: post #138

I was lucky. Our high school system shared a DEC PDP-8. This was in 1974. Each year, Digital equipment would publish a manual. Some years were better than others. Somewhat like a vintage wine. The choice of languages for the PDP-8 were Basic, Fortran, and Focal. It also had a user group called Decus, which shared code - somewhat akin to GitHub. But, I didn't use much of that code, as it usually meant hand entering th…

> I was lucky. Our high school system shared a DEC PDP-8. This was in 1974.

Luxury! (Monty Python "Four Yorkshiremen" reference)

In 1974 I was (the equivalent of) a junior in high school in South Africa. Back then we called it "Form 4", fwiw.

* Number of computers at high school: Zero

* Number of computers to which we had access: Zero

A friend and I joined the school computer club. I think we were the only members.

We were allowed to sit in on a FORTRAN IV programming course at the local university, and use their IBM 360/50 mainframe via golfball ttys. We were even allowed to write the exam, which we failed spectacularly.

We would have killed for a PDP-8 (if we even knew what that was, frankly). There was no such thing as "online".

"And you tell that to the kids today? They won't believe ya!"

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