first job programming on a Burroughs "billing computer"
summer 1971, in a business-oriented assembly language.
BASIC and FORTRAN before that, but just playing.
Poll: How long have you been programming?
211–220 of 329 posts
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Is 1% of 1% of the effort it took to program an 8-bit machine.
The difference is how easy it is to find the information about what to do. Someone totally new won't know what notepad is, won't know what html is, and won't know how to make the browser show it, and the manual that came with his computer will say nothing about it. You start a browser, there's no hint what to do. You start searching for "how to make a web page" and you get a bewildering array of information, some of…
I remember opening a browser, selecting the "View Source" option, and there was my first web page. I really started to learn how to program when a misconfigured web server spit out the source code to a web app that I enjoyed using.
I think the commonality between us here is that having access to the source itself provides the best learning environment.
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#213Erm, where's the six years option? Because that's exactly where I fall...
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Is 1% of 1% of the effort it took to program an 8-bit machine.
You may as well just open up notepad and type "Hello, world!", and leave it at that. HTML is not a programming language; if you want to program on the Web you do have to jump into JavaScript.
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#215Started with Basic and 6502 Assembler on the first available Personal Computer (Commodore PET-2001).
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started a 15 year old girl programming yesterday with Processing because she showed an interest in conceptual art for games. I showed her some examples, she downloaded and installed the application on her own as I watched and started entering the tutorial text (not copy/paste either as I might have resorted to). I guided her in what she'll need to get a grip on with her math classes etc, and I heard from her teache…
Just for curiosity: Did you also have a look at PyGame? If yes, how does it compare to Processing?
Processing is way way cleaner than PyGame. It is nice that people are creating interesting things in PyGame but I think more good would come about if it didn't exist so something better could flourish.
And I say this as a python programmer since 1998.
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's true. NOTEPAD.EXE and Firefox is all you need to start with HTML and JavaScript, for example. Microsoft gives away Visual Studio for free download, there are all the open source languages (ActiveState does great distros for Windows) etc etc. It's a cultural shift. Kids these days are consumers, not producers.
Totally agree. You're describing how I started... for a kid wanting to write a web page over 10 years ago you were lucky to have access to lissaexplains.com & w3schools.com. Nowadays you've got stackoverflow, smashing mag network, nettuts etc - not to mention a whole shitload of resources offering free code / designs / icons, ready to roll stuff like wordpress, etc.
LissaExplains... Now there's a site I haven't heard of in a long time. Does anyone know what she's up to these days?
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#218While I graduated with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (and rarely attended), I started to code my freshman year in college (2003) after my dormitory neighbor got me interested in computers; he wore a robe most of the time, had a hefty beard, and kept a bucket of computer parts in his closet. He talked a lot about IP tables :) It's only been down the rabbit hole ever since!
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#219[deleted]
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#220[deleted]