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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)

#281

Post by brightball »

chatmasta wrote: post #154
brightball wrote: post #141

Barnes & Noble. That was the go to resource for programming books. I remember back in 2001 I'd been self-taught PHP for about 3 years and was able to be productive, build some stuff that I needed built and was generally comfortable with how things worked. As far as I was concerned I "knew PHP". One day I was stuck on a problem so I actually went to B&N and bought a big PHP book because it looked like it had what I ne…

I also read a lot of books from Barnes and Noble. I've still got the bookshelf... some pretty hilarious titles on there. Macromedia Flash 2004 for Dummies, C++ in 30 Days (complete with a Borland compiler install CD)... great memories. Are you talking about "Advanced PHP Programming?" I bought that book when I wasn't even as tall as the checkout counter at b&n. The cashier was very confused. I remember learning the f…

I don't actually have the book anymore but that might be it. It was a big, red Wrox book.

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

#282

Post by chrshawkes »

fivestar wrote: post #277
alanbernstein wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your problem with the current state of SO?

One problem is that the correct answers have to change over time and SO does not account for that except by having drive-by downvotes from dweebies who have no business even answering questions. I used to answer questions on SO, but got so tired of arguing with idiots that I decided it wasn't worth my time anymore. It's too bad, too, because I strongly believe in "giving back" where I can and SO was a way to do that.…

so sorry to see you go.

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

#283

Post by jlg23 »

JadeNB wrote: post #228
jlg23 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real difference: When you found a crappy workaround, you learned . You were frustrated, felt stupid but you learned. You made the same experience every child has to make once: Dont', just fscking don't, touch the hot plate. But, you learned . That's something neither SO-driven nor google-driven development can provide. I firmly believe that every detour I took (mostly FreeBSD userland sources or any port I never…

> The real difference: When you found a crappy workaround, you learned. You were frustrated, felt stupid but you learned. You made the same experience every child has to make once: Dont', just fscking don't, touch the hot plate. Surely every educational innovation is greeted with this sort of lament? (I'm a teacher, and I know that, if I listen carefully to myself, the "good old ways" whose loss I am bemoaning are th…

Uhm. No. I am not lamenting an "educational innovation", I am saying that being presented a solution is not education at all. Education for me means understanding, understanding requires thinking, thinking requires time and taking wrong turns (because we only understand that the turn was wrong after exploring it).

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

#284

Post by wst_ »

data_hope wrote: post #268
alanbernstein wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair, but that's the point of upvoting questions, no? As someone who uses SO through google searches 95% of the time, I mostly see high quality discussions.

The best discussions are usually marked off topic or 'no good fit" or "not of use for future readers"

And that's OK because discussions tend to lean in different direction, very often, and before you know it you are talking about something completely different. If you are sticking to the topic and have something really important to add, don't worry, moderators won't get in the way.

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

#285

Post by alanbernstein »

data_hope wrote: post #268
alanbernstein wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair, but that's the point of upvoting questions, no? As someone who uses SO through google searches 95% of the time, I mostly see high quality discussions.

The best discussions are usually marked off topic or 'no good fit" or "not of use for future readers"

Yea - that's my biggest beef with SO currently, what I thought OP would say when I asked him.

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

#286

Post by lanstin »

pjc50 wrote: post #194
lanstin wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old software system was mathematics; you could be absolutely certain that the code was correct, in a way mathematics is correct. The new software system is like biology; you have to perform experiments to see what the truth is; reason fails.

I think that's romanticising the old ways far too much. The famous RISKS DIGEST is over 30 years old.

RISKS was entertaining because the mistakes seemed so obvious.

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

#287

Post by user_rob »

Started my programming in 1975 on a pdp using fortran 4 - used punched cards for storing and running significant programs. Used something called I* to edit binary files. A fluorescent light with "crash" in big letters on it came on from time to time. Could play a few games including moon lander and some star trek game. Then it was RTFM and only a few people were knowledgeable and the run debug cycle was slow - 1 day per iteration - errors printed out on big sheets of paper. Everything seems pretty easy after that...

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

#288

Post by JadeNB »

jlg23 wrote: post #283
JadeNB wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real difference: When you found a crappy workaround, you learned. You were frustrated, felt stupid but you learned. You made the same experience every child has to make once: Dont', just fscking don't, touch the hot plate. Surely every educational innovation is greeted with this sort of lament? (I'm a teacher, and I know that, if I listen carefully to myself, the "good old ways" whose loss I am bemoaning are th…

Uhm. No. I am not lamenting an "educational innovation", I am saying that being presented a solution is not education at all. Education for me means understanding, understanding requires thinking, thinking requires time and taking wrong turns (because we only understand that the turn was wrong after exploring it).

> I am not lamenting an "educational innovation", I am saying that being presented a solution is not education at all.

For what it's worth, that was exactly what I meant. I don't think that anyone says, or even thinks, "grr, these kids and their ways of learning that aren't exactly like mine!"; but rather that one sees these kids and their ways of learning that aren't exactly one's own, and says "grr, these kids aren't really learning!"

This isn't to say that it isn't true, as I'm sure that sometimes it is, but that I think that most of the time it's a reaction that's likely to fade with time. However we learned looked, almost assuredly, like "not really learning" to some of those who came before us. Again, to appeal to my own experience, I have become a lot more relaxed about the use of calculators in math classrooms; I initially felt that they were taking away from students' calculational facility (and have not changed my mind about that …), but now feel more that they are clearing away the computational drudgery to allow more room for conceptual exploration. It is believeable to me that being able to Google the answers to things that are already known is a great way to get as quickly as possible to the things that aren't already known—although, of course, it is a worthwhile argument whether, or how much, preparation it offers to deal with those unknown things upon reaching them.

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

#289

Post by defined »

musesum wrote: post #271
defined wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was lucky. Our high school system shared a DEC PDP-8. This was in 1974. Luxury! (Monty Python "Four Yorkshiremen" reference) In 1974 I was (the equivalent of) a junior in high school in South Africa. Back then we called it "Form 4", fwiw. * Number of computers at high school: Zero * Number of computers to which we had access: Zero A friend and I joined the school computer club. I think we were the only members. W…

And yet here we are. It appears that all roads lead to hacker news. > "Four Yorkshiremen" Zero computers? Ok, you win. This is a later version of our computer https://youtu.be/NtAF-WfWyGU To load the OS, you first had to hand key in a bootstrap loader in octal (base 8) on the front panel. The loader would then read the OS from paper tape into magnetic core. Our computer was a PDP-8/i. Someone mentioned that the PDP-8…

> This is a later version of our computer...

Nice YouTube video, thanks.

> To load the OS, you first had to hand key in a bootstrap loader in octal (base 8) on the front panel.

When I eventually got to university in 1978, we had a PDP-11 of some sort, and I recall entering the boot program by setting the address and data toggle switches and booting from paper tape. I have no idea if it was core memory.

Those were the days :)

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

#290

Post by grkvlt »

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…

Of course google is trying to help ordinary perple - the sort who type a few words into the search box, get zero results, then add some more search terms assuming that being more specific will help the search engine find what they are looking for. So, default AND becomes default OR along with other 'improvements' but to the detriment of self-declared power users...
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