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Poll: How long have you been programming?

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Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#91

Post by stoolpigeon »

vivekjishtu wrote: post #56
sev wrote: post #49

I think the first time I tried programming was when I was simply looking at QBasic code, astonished how Nibbles and Gorillas work and thought, "these characters I see on the screen before running the game are what make the game function? If so, how?" This was on my father's 486/33 I believe, although I barely remember his 386 which could have been what it was on. Regardless, I was probably 5 or 6 and I tried messing…

Nibbles and Gorillas was the first piece of code that I saw and was amazed how it worked. It taught me why we need to use functions and subs. And as a 13 year old it was fascinating to understand those concepts. And most of the programming I learnt was from the snippets of code in the QBasic help files.

At my highschool - the progression was Basic on Apple IIe machines and then Pascal. I remember talking to an older friend who was already doing Pascal and he said, "There are no line numbers." I was stunned. "What?! How can you write a program without line numbers?"

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#93

Post by stoolpigeon »

I played with a lot of basic stuff as a kid - but it was my senior year in high school that I think I hit a real pinnacle. My friends and I that spent all our time in the schools computer lab wrote a game - now it was just a simple text adventure game. It was like a choose your own adventure book - using goto statements based on choices but it was incredible. We called it "Computer Room Adventure" and it was full of amazing, witty and cutting commentary on the school and the people in it. It was cutting edge - there was a section where it didn't matter what keys you chose, we printed out a message that made it feel like you were typing it. And we made fun of Andrew a lot - and you know that guy deserved it. It was probably one of the greatest losses of our civilisation when that 5 and a quarter floppy bit it.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#94

Post by hackermom »

I started at age 8 or 9 on my VIC-20. This was in 1988-89. Later I got a C-64 followed by the Amiga models, and found my way to assembler and along with that a fundamental understanding of how computers work, what's possible and what's not, and how to (in terms of performance) properly and efficiently make computers do what you want them to do.

Commodore computers played a huge part in raising me.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#95

Post by gaius »

Retric wrote: post #87
gaius wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but if you wanted to program a VIC-20, you were literally POKEing 6502 opcodes as hex numbers into memory addresses - the development tool VICMON cost extra, and even then you still had to know the mnemonics. And people of my generation still did it. And kids today have everything handed to them on a plate, they just aren't interested.

Adoption has increased, but the web is also far more interesting than playing another text based adventure game. So, I think the percentage of total people has stayed about the same. It's only the percentage of people with access to a computer who learn to program that's changed. Because, the further back you go the fewer things there where to do with a computer other than learn to program.

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 to distribute your program as a listing or on the coverdisk.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#96

Post by insom »

vivekjishtu wrote: post #56
sev wrote: post #49

I think the first time I tried programming was when I was simply looking at QBasic code, astonished how Nibbles and Gorillas work and thought, "these characters I see on the screen before running the game are what make the game function? If so, how?" This was on my father's 486/33 I believe, although I barely remember his 386 which could have been what it was on. Regardless, I was probably 5 or 6 and I tried messing…

Nibbles and Gorillas was the first piece of code that I saw and was amazed how it worked. It taught me why we need to use functions and subs. And as a 13 year old it was fascinating to understand those concepts. And most of the programming I learnt was from the snippets of code in the QBasic help files.

Yup, the first lump of non-line-numbered BASIC I'd ever seen. I learned on the Spectrum 48K and when I switched to PCs I kept all of the limitations with me until I read those two.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#97

Post by tmh88j »

My first attempt at programming was in 8th grade (mid 20's now) using VB. I remember writing a program that converted text to pig latin and I was so proud of it. Despite majoring in engineering, I only had to take some intro programming courses and used a bit of Matlab. Well, fast forward to about 8 months ago I came up with an idea for a web-app and decided that now was the perfect time to become good at programming. For about 2 months straight I spent at least 3 hours every day following tutorials and tried to create little algorithms in PHP (sort an array, find largest number in an array, count the instances of a character in a string, etc...). After ~200 hours I felt comfortable enough to start writing the web-app. I'm amazed how far I've come in the past ~8 months.

Not to hijack this post, but does anyone else remember their first "cool" program?

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#98

Post by sqnguyen »

I've been programming for about 7 years or so in a high school class. I was 15. My first language was Turing (Pascal-like language). I remember struggling with recursion, but thankfully I had an awesome computer science teacher who taught me really well.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#99

Post by frou_dh »

Retric wrote: post #87
gaius wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but if you wanted to program a VIC-20, you were literally POKEing 6502 opcodes as hex numbers into memory addresses - the development tool VICMON cost extra, and even then you still had to know the mnemonics. And people of my generation still did it. And kids today have everything handed to them on a plate, they just aren't interested.

Adoption has increased, but the web is also far more interesting than playing another text based adventure game. So, I think the percentage of total people has stayed about the same. It's only the percentage of people with access to a computer who learn to program that's changed. Because, the further back you go the fewer things there where to do with a computer other than learn to program.

Web access is pretty scary in that regard. Infinite novelty on tap can be a demotivator to create anything.
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