Started in 1983 on Apple IIc, writing text-based adventure games. I was 13 years old then. First professional job in 1991.
Poll: How long have you been programming?
141–150 of 329 posts
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#142I've been programming ever since I got my first computer when I was a kid. I only took it up as a career about 8.5-ish years ago. Could've tacked on a few years if I went to university but I was convinced in my youth that I was going to be a rock-star and producer. Turns out I'm a geek. ;)
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, but a kid who uses the web and wants to make their own web page, has basically zero barriers to overcome. All they need is the browser they already use, and Notepad. Sure hosting it somewhere is a bit more work, but trivial compared to distributing a program you wrote in the 80s, where you had to physically exchange cassettes or floppy disks with your friends in the school playground (!) or persuade a magazine…
yet there are a lot of concepts they need to digest before they jump into the html/js world. it already means they need to learn two languages (html and js), interaction between them , etc... I'm not even mentioning things like - open notepad, save the file, make sure you get the extension right, fire up the browser, click open (why not in address bar? oh yeah, you can, but tell a kid the file:/// business and see if…
I still maintain that
- Start -> Run -> notepad
- Hello, World!, Save As "hello.htm" on desktop
- double-click it and watch it appear in a browser
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#144My first encounter with a computer was the Pong game ('78). Second encounter was a time-shared Star Trek ('79) at our high school (and my first year in US). I distinctly remember not making/having any distinction between OS and the game application and that has always left me sympathetic to newb users - we take so much for granted and to be "obvious" when they really are not "obvious".
First computer and first programs followed shortly ('81): TI-99/4A and ("16 bits!") "Extended" Basic and mostly sprite based games. Sampled CS in EE school -- punch cards and assembly. Usual EE type Fortran programs, but nothing 'systemic'.
First paid work was working for a startup in my senior undergrad year building a jet engine turbine CAD system (I did the UI framework for picking, menues, etc. -- this is before Windows ;) The other project was a Fortan to C translator which provided the opporutnity to learn (fairly serious) C while contributing to that effort. ('86)
I code (compulsively at times) to this day.
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, but a kid who uses the web and wants to make their own web page, has basically zero barriers to overcome. All they need is the browser they already use, and Notepad. Sure hosting it somewhere is a bit more work, but trivial compared to distributing a program you wrote in the 80s, where you had to physically exchange cassettes or floppy disks with your friends in the school playground (!) or persuade a magazine…
yet there are a lot of concepts they need to digest before they jump into the html/js world. it already means they need to learn two languages (html and js), interaction between them , etc... I'm not even mentioning things like - open notepad, save the file, make sure you get the extension right, fire up the browser, click open (why not in address bar? oh yeah, you can, but tell a kid the file:/// business and see if…
I would recommend not trying to teach for loops etc... Show them how to tie a function to an image to make it move across the screen as a building block to make a game and they will find it interesting. Maybe start with flash/actionscript so they can see (click image > write code for image > image does stuff)
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#146What's up with all these polls? I don't understand the significance of this poll, besides being an icebreaker/conversation starter. HN seems to be stuck in naval gazing* mode.
*navel gazing.
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#147Dad bright home a 110bps acoustic-coupled printing terminal, dialed into the Honeywell mainframe, and had me type in a 3-line BASIC program which printed a sine wave. I was 10, and I was hooked.
Soon after, he handed me a book that taught assembler programming by directing the read to hand execute instructions in the corner of each page, flipping pages to find the next.
A couple dialup terminals later, we assembled a ZX-80 kit. 1KB RAM. Built a sound card from scratch for it.
Long story short, 20+ years as a developer and teach programming part time. That today's students start with high level 3D GUIs and gigabit networking makes it hard to drag them back to the binary basics and build from there.
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it pretty funny that _after_ you graduated (and according to the hardware you had at the time) you decided to completely change careers :)
I did pretty much the same thing, graduated with a masters in mechanical engineering. Taught myself to code and switched careers. Lots of cross over skill. (and engineering is very boring...) :-)
I did the same thing (ComputerEng, but more of a EE focus), mainly because there wasn't a job market that was interested in me when I graduated. I suspect this is more common with engineering grads than most others. The barrier to entry for programming is much lower than that for engineering, which requires taking the FE, getting licensed, apprenticeships (in some locales), getting relicensed, and still no guarantee of a job. Knowing that, and needing a real job after years of no interest in "my field," I took the meager programming skills I'd been mostly ignoring since the 80s and made a go of it.
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#149did a FORTRAN course 3 years into a physics degree. In order to avoid using emacs over X11-forwarded SSH within windows (yes, this was how the course recommended you work.....) I built a proper computer (as opposed to ancient laptop which had been fine up to then) and installed openSUSE. I have not stopped playing with code since, and my first job on graduating was as a developer (although I've since quit to do a physics PhD that is mostly python programming.)
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#150I started with BASIC on Commodore 16 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_16) and shortly after MOS 6502 assembler back in the mid 80s when I was in my early teens. Commodore 16 had a monitor program build in, all you had to do is type MONITOR and you were able to edit memory directly in machine/assembler code, save it, run it etc (http://www.commodore16.com/php/images/books/downloads/Tedmon...).
Later, I got Commodore 64, then 128, then Amiga 500 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_500) which was such a joy to program. This is where I got my first exposure to C programming (Aztec C http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_C) and VIM. VIM was in fact first developed for Amiga where it was known as VI iMitation (hece VIM), and later back ported to UNIX. In the 90s went to university to study math and computer science and that's where I got introduced to "big iron" UNIX (HPUX). In late 90s I did some Windows C++ development, but I now program for all kinds of platforms from Solaris, to AIX to HPUX to Linux to Windows and Mac OS X and in dozens of languages. We even make our own VI, awk compiler, Perl interpreter, std C lib for all kinds of platforms, POSIX APIs port to Windows and others, port of UNIX tools and shells to Windows and a multi million LOC ALM application suite.
But today's computing really can't be compared to the experience in the 80s, when you as a kid could master your CPU and know its complete instruction set, its registers and important memory locations and feel completely in control. I shudder when I see where general computing is headed with kids dreaming of owning iPads.