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Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

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Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#261

Post by bad_user »

ta_1138 wrote: post #206
sfn42 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamentals don't change. Sure there's a new frontend framework every week but they're all just generating html.

It's often hard to tell what information is truly fundamental, and what will age badly. I look at many books of software engineering that were popular in the early 2000s, like The Pragmatic Programmer, Agile Software Development or the Design Patterns book by the gang of 4. Those books aren't taking about technologies that we expected to be superceded in 5 years. And yet, a lot of the text regarding object orientatio…

Mutexes, semaphore, CAS, threads are fundamental and this doesn't change when you embrace monadic effect systems or continuations, even if some of the details change (e.g., obviously, if a computation can jump threads, then you need implementations of mutexes, semaphores, etc, that can jump threads).

Also, programming languages in 10 years from now will be pretty much the same languages we have today. There might be a newcomer or two, but it will be niche, as incumbents don't really change and only grow.

As a reminder, for people thinking that technologies change too fast, POSIX is still here and as relevant as ever.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#262

Post by jonathanlydall »

MrVandemar wrote: post #257
growingkittens wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So much of my career has been shaped by running into developers or just people interested in programming out in the world. This is probably less common now, but remember not to laugh at young girls in the programming section of a bookstore. In the 90s, that was a pretty standard response: no advice, just incredulity.

> remember not to laugh at young girls in the programming section of a bookstore I can't believe anyone needs a reminder to act like an actual human being, much less not to belittle someone -- anyone! -- who is interested in learning anything constructive. Unbelievable that anyone, ever, would act that way.

Sadly it’s almost always “learned” from (or actively “taught” by) others, mostly parents or peers who themselves learned it from parents.

Children/young adults aren’t even necessarily aware that their behaviour is inappropriate as it’s “normal” based on what they’ve seen happen around them their whole lives.

Adults should know better, but may do it anyway due to the human tendency to often dig their feet in, or consciously/actively do it for a reason which really has nothing to with the persecuted group.

Bigotry/racism/sexism persevere largely due to the above.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#263

Post by Lamad1234 »

testcase_delta wrote: post #58
freedmand wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how people’s learning habits will change with AI tools like GitHub Copilot. I used it for several months but randomly got logged out and am now finding myself valuing the slight inconvenience of looking up official documentation (and surprised how much more sluggish I felt for the first week). Going through extra steps to learn something through primary sources and valuing being uncomfortable at times are im…

I started learning to code this year, and I keep thinking that I would have thrown in the towel if not for ChatGPT. For better or for worse. The big difference for me is being able to struggle right up until I'm ready to give up, and then ask ChatGPT for insight. Usually my issue is a syntax one, and I have the concepts down (i.e. I was right to solve it using nested if statements, but I forgot I need to put a variab…

[dead]

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#264

Post by ilaksh »

miiiiiike wrote: post #155

I bought a copy of "Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours" at a CompUSA in 1999. The guy at the checkout looked at it, laughed, and told me about this article. When I was 16 I was looking at programming books at Borders and a guy handed me a copy of "The C Programming Language"; changed my life. So much of my career has been shaped by running into developers or just people interested in programming out in the world. Th…

My intro to programming was "Getting Started with Extended Color BASIC" for the Coco 2.

Another favorite book was Turbo Pascal DiskTutor.

My C++ book was C++ How to Program.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#265

Post by kstrauser »

neilv wrote: post #225
hinkley wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss CompUSA. I still firmly believe that the move to transparent bags is what killed them. For me it ruined my annual tradition of buying Christmas presents while family was next door in another store, but I’m sure for others it was being treated like a criminal. Those magnetic readers aren’t great but they aren’t in your face. Once I stopped going in routinely I stopped going in at all.

The CompUSA that opened in Cambridge, MA, had a guard who insisted on checking your purchases after the registers, like you were a criminal, or implying it was a crime-heavy area. Not the kind of insult or atmosphere anyone should have to put up with, and, further, the generally affluent people of Harvard and MIT, which the store was located right between, weren't accustomed to it. I called this out in 2000, when I m…

Still better than Circuit City. I bought a graphics card there once. It was dead on arrival. I took it back to the store to exchange it, but that was their last one. I asked for a refund then, and they told me about their restocking fee. The kindly offered to give me 100% credit to another card that was twice as expensive.

That was the only time I’ve been asked to “sir, please keep your voice down” and “sir, we need you to leave”. I still think I was on the right side of that one.

My credit card company eventually handled it for me.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#266

Post by insane_dreamer »

julesallen wrote: post #237
miiiiiike wrote: post #155

I bought a copy of "Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours" at a CompUSA in 1999. The guy at the checkout looked at it, laughed, and told me about this article. When I was 16 I was looking at programming books at Borders and a guy handed me a copy of "The C Programming Language"; changed my life. So much of my career has been shaped by running into developers or just people interested in programming out in the world. Th…

Love reading the comments here and how these books changed lives. For me it was dBASE III PLUS programmer's reference guide from 1987 and it imparted enough knowledge to start a programming career. Read that dog eared thing end to end and still have it in my book collection. Thank you, Alan Simpson wherever you might be.

my first book as well; good memories

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#267

Post by insane_dreamer »

freedmand wrote: post #45
calibas wrote: post #28

> The key is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again. I think this is the really important part, you have to challenge yourself and go outside of your comfort zones to keep learning.

I wonder how people’s learning habits will change with AI tools like GitHub Copilot. I used it for several months but randomly got logged out and am now finding myself valuing the slight inconvenience of looking up official documentation (and surprised how much more sluggish I felt for the first week). Going through extra steps to learn something through primary sources and valuing being uncomfortable at times are im…

or just fall back to StackOverflow

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#268

Post by fud101 »

miiiiiike wrote: post #155

I bought a copy of "Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours" at a CompUSA in 1999. The guy at the checkout looked at it, laughed, and told me about this article. When I was 16 I was looking at programming books at Borders and a guy handed me a copy of "The C Programming Language"; changed my life. So much of my career has been shaped by running into developers or just people interested in programming out in the world. Th…

i bought two books in 2000 at 17, same as you, the sams teach yourself C and C++ for dummies. Small world. thanks for sharing!

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#269

Post by lannisterstark »

bch wrote: post #208
noneeeed wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the hills on which I am prepared to die on is that "The C Programming Language" is the best programming language book I've ever read. Every developer should read it and learn C at least once, even if they promptly forgot it all.

You’re not going to die on that hill. There are so many people that share your opinion that you might have trouble finding space, but you’re not going to die on that hill.

Javelins have an easier time finding people if there are a lot of them on a hill.

So someone will.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#270

Post by lannisterstark »

peterfirefly wrote: post #252
jansommer wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT has been a blessing for learning C. How do you calculate the conjugate for a complex double when the compiler doesn't support complex numbers? ChatGPT will give you the correct answer together with math examples. One example out of many. Then I verify the result by looking at other people's code - and now I know what to look for. I wouldn't use Copilot. I've noticed how it distracts people in screen recording…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_mathematical_functions#compl... https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-runtime-library/comp... https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language/arithmetic_types#Co...

Yes. They already got the answer, thanks. Pointing out links after the fact is laughable.

Some of you are set in this idea that an LLM can possibly not be even slightly helpful that you have to trudge through pages of documentation just to look for one slight thing that it'd have told you right away _if_ you wanted it to.

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