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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)

#251

Post by spc476 »

cm2187 wrote: post #248
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 think they key is your dad being a programmer. My first missed encounter with programming was when I was a teenager in the 90s. I sort of wanted to do more with these machine but wasn't sure where to start. My parents weren't particularly IT savvy (though we had home computers since the Mac SE) and weren't keen for me to do something else than outdoor activities. I still managed to get them to buy me a copy of code…

> I think they key is your dad being a programmer.

I don't think so. My experience was pretty much the same as jslabovitz's, just without the progamming dad.

I started programming in 1984 and pretty much only had books, manuals, and magazines to work from. I only had one friend who had a computer and it wasn't the same as mine (and in the 80s, there were scores of different CPUs and operating systems to choose from) so I was more or less on my own.

I still miss the BYTE magazine with the Robert Tinney covers ...

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

#252

Post by cm2187 »

spc476 wrote: post #251
cm2187 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they key is your dad being a programmer. My first missed encounter with programming was when I was a teenager in the 90s. I sort of wanted to do more with these machine but wasn't sure where to start. My parents weren't particularly IT savvy (though we had home computers since the Mac SE) and weren't keen for me to do something else than outdoor activities. I still managed to get them to buy me a copy of code…

> I think they key is your dad being a programmer. I don't think so. My experience was pretty much the same as jslabovitz's, just without the progamming dad. I started programming in 1984 and pretty much only had books, manuals, and magazines to work from. I only had one friend who had a computer and it wasn't the same as mine (and in the 80s, there were scores of different CPUs and operating systems to choose from)…

But somehow someone must have pointed you in the direction of these books and magazines. I wasn't even aware there were programming magazines then.

Also in the early 80s using a computer pretty much meant programming. In the early 90s (my youth) computers all had some form of GUI and lots of shareware, and computer magazine weren't really talking about programming.

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

#253

Post by Keyframe »

Now I feel old. Stack Overflow was launched the year when I celebrated the year I moved away from professional programming into another realm!

Books were everything! Sometimes even the computer access was rare, so you better hit your books in order to get a rolling start when you get the access to one - writing code on paper!

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

#254

Post by dnautics »

JadeNB wrote: post #226
rsync wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." Programming became easier with altavista, which was an excellent search engine that supported complex, boolean search operators and respected (((multiple) nested) "parens with quotes") ... and other such complexities. Google dumbed this down and to this d…

> Google dumbed this down and to this day is very difficult to accurately and precisely use. I'm not sure that this is so much AltaVista versus Google; I remember when Google first came on the scene (or when I first became aware of it?), I found its 'expert' options better than AltaVista's. They have, as you say, become much, much less effective over time, but it seems sadly plausible that the same would have happene…

yep, google had a better indexing of the net and also had exact string search. Altavista only had exact string search (which was better than yahoo). Since then, google no longer reliably gives you exact string searches.

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

#255

Post by js2 »

cm2187 wrote: post #252
spc476 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think they key is your dad being a programmer. I don't think so. My experience was pretty much the same as jslabovitz's, just without the progamming dad. I started programming in 1984 and pretty much only had books, manuals, and magazines to work from. I only had one friend who had a computer and it wasn't the same as mine (and in the 80s, there were scores of different CPUs and operating systems to choose from)…

But somehow someone must have pointed you in the direction of these books and magazines. I wasn't even aware there were programming magazines then. Also in the early 80s using a computer pretty much meant programming. In the early 90s (my youth) computers all had some form of GUI and lots of shareware, and computer magazine weren't really talking about programming.

I was born in 71 and my dad got us an Apple II in 1980. He wasn't a programmer, but the Apple II came with a full set of hardware and software manuals. We also had a Byte subscription. I taught myself Applesoft Basic, then 6502 assembly. I distinctly remember having printouts of assembly listings spanning dozens of pages spread across the floor which I annotated.

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

#256

Post by spc476 »

cm2187 wrote: post #252
spc476 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think they key is your dad being a programmer. I don't think so. My experience was pretty much the same as jslabovitz's, just without the progamming dad. I started programming in 1984 and pretty much only had books, manuals, and magazines to work from. I only had one friend who had a computer and it wasn't the same as mine (and in the 80s, there were scores of different CPUs and operating systems to choose from)…

But somehow someone must have pointed you in the direction of these books and magazines. I wasn't even aware there were programming magazines then. Also in the early 80s using a computer pretty much meant programming. In the early 90s (my youth) computers all had some form of GUI and lots of shareware, and computer magazine weren't really talking about programming.

Yeah, it was me who pointed me in the direction of those books and magazines. You would probably not believe the number of computer related magazines in the 80s. Even my computer (the not-too-popular TRS-80 Color Computer) had like four magazines devoted to it.

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

#257

Post by Can_Not »

paganel wrote: post #222
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,…

> Another difference is that documentation is essentially annotated today. If the documentation is confusing or misleading, it's usually clarified in a stack overflow or some other forum. Before Google, if documentation was confusing, you were stuck guessing or hacking. That was very time consuming. I would say that one of the reasons why php (the language) took off in the early 2000s was because of its excellent doc…

It's like when they say "X dev's are too lazy a new language". More likely, your documentation is garbage.

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

#258

Post by jslabovitz »

ajarmst wrote: post #153
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'm of similar vintage, although my father was a mainframe technician, so I had some significant on-site expertise to draw on, even over the 6502 and Z-80 boards in our basement. One thing I've noted, now that I teach programming to the Stack Overflow generation is that we had to be much, much better at troubleshooting. Now, we had the advantage of dealing with pretty primitive systems -- 'troubleshooting' often invo…

> [...] my systems were simple enough that I had a pretty accurate mental model of how the whole system worked [...]

This is key. I've worked on dozens of systems, platforms, frameworks, etc., and the common predictor of how well I program in each environment is directly related to how well I understand the mental model of the architecture.

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

#259

Post by jcl »

dnautics wrote: post #254
JadeNB wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google dumbed this down and to this day is very difficult to accurately and precisely use. I'm not sure that this is so much AltaVista versus Google; I remember when Google first came on the scene (or when I first became aware of it?), I found its 'expert' options better than AltaVista's. They have, as you say, become much, much less effective over time, but it seems sadly plausible that the same would have happene…

yep, google had a better indexing of the net and also had exact string search. Altavista only had exact string search (which was better than yahoo). Since then, google no longer reliably gives you exact string searches.

I've noticed Google is pretty good about finding exact matches when you put the search terms in quotes.

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

#260

Post by doug1001 »

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…

don't know about the website, but "Pen Island" is/was a small shop on Regents Street in London (not far from Picadilly Circus tube station) that sold high end fountain pens, mechanical pencils, etc. Don't know if it's still there, but it was list time i was in the UK (2007)
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