My Aha moment came when I built my first toy application using a layer approach. The data access layer, the business logic layer, and the UI. That moment came when I realized how these things come together. This is such a powerful concept; to successfully build a complex application requires the ability to integrate simpler abstractions.
Ask HN: What made programming finally click for you?
41–48 of 48 posts
Re: Ask HN: What made programming finally click for you?
#42For me, it was the realization that some languages have REPLs and can be used just like bash. Since I started with Linux sysadmin and worked my way into programming, I found a lot of the details of programming hard to understand, e.g. runtimes, compilation, dependencies. Most intro compsci classes I've seen tend to use C++ for some reason.
But, once I started using Python, and specifically the ipython interpreter, I realized that programming didn't always have to be statically typed and compiled and work with a Makefile. It could work like a bash prompt!
Eventually, I did branch out into Rust for compiled languages, but my REPL realization gave me the ability to experiment and "fail fast" in a more familiar environment.
Re: Ask HN: What made programming finally click for you?
#43I was looking forward to a thread like this, very motivating! Being a hacker without a CS degree sometimes creates steep learning curves.
Re: Ask HN: What made programming finally click for you?
#44I started programming 30+ years ago
Any time I hit something new, it only "clicked" when I had an application for the topic/concept
Take tree traversal
I wrote a working ~400 line linear octree traverser in high school in C++
Learned about recursion my second year in college, and rewrote that traversal code in about half a page
I had seen/heard of recursion before (even before I wrote the tree traversal code), but hadn't seen it applied to the type of problem I was working on
Once I saw an application of recursive tree traversal (on a binary tree, fwiw), using it in my other setting was a 100% no brainer :)
That's still true today - though I "program" notably less now (scripting, tool-specific languages, etc), all the whizbang features of whatever mean precisely nothing until I have a use case/application for them
Re: Ask HN: What made programming finally click for you?
#45To add to this question: is there any language in particular that makes learning programming concepts any easier? I often see people mentioned Visual Basic but since that is no longer around, what would be the next closest thing? I suppose Python? I use PowerShell for a lot of my scripting needs and have found it to be pretty intuitive, but am wondering what other languages I might enjoy solving problems in.
Do you have any resources that make PowerShell intuitive? I've been using bash for ages but PS looks like a verbose, wildly disorganized language, possibly optimized for Windows idiosyncrasies. I have difficulties remembering just the syntax for getting the list of environment variables. > what other languages I might enjoy solving problems in Clojure - as intro I had "The Joy of Clojure" by Michael Fogus
Just use it everyday and you will grok the basics after few months. If you want to do something in xyz, you do it in pwsh no matter how long it takes initially.
> I have difficulties remembering just the syntax for getting the list of environment variables.
How is that possible. Its simply ls env:
Re: Ask HN: What made programming finally click for you?
#46Learning some Java when C++ was dominating. It seemed so much easier for the beginner to get a working program and think more about the problem space in a purer way. Also the fact it came with a great standard library.
+1, while not really a “aha” moment, it was definitely a “holy shit” moment coming to Java from C++. Another moment was trying out Node.js to see what all the fuss was about (coming from Java/C#), I’m not a huge fan of JS but I was blown away by how easy it is to build stuff (npm was the real killer feature, unfortunately I never came across any other language that did it better).
There is something about NodeJS culture that you get very pragmatic and easy to use libraries come out of it. There is a lot of nonsense too, but it the closest ecosystem to lego. It might be the pain of making stuff interoperable on NPM/JS leads
towards people going for simpler APIs.
Re: Ask HN: What made programming finally click for you?
#47I'm not entirely sure when did programming really clicked for me, but there is this one time that still sticks in my memory to this day. There was this video which explained the concept of functions, and I clearly remember that eureka moment when he explained about the "return value" and I really just paused the video and looked into my source file and programming has never been the same ever since. Prior to this I was really just doing copy&paste trial&error.
Re: Ask HN: What made programming finally click for you?
#48No post body was provided.