How did you learn to program?
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Crikey - that's hardcore! I learnt (Sinclair) BASIC before I even thought of assembly language. I have since then gone through 680x0, VAX, PowerPC and 80x86 assembly language - all trying to catch up on a slow start :-)
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Ditto except for the swearing ;)
The swearing was my favorite part! Well, second to trying to minimize the number of clock cycles required for an integer multiply...
"...a photo album is like Life, but flat and stuck to pages." - Shog9
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How did you learn to program? Is it from the internet? a book? If from internet wut site and if book, wut book? I'm trying to learn any language like C++ or C# and i dont have any materials and dont know where to get some good sources. When you first learn your language, was it hard and how long did it take you to start to create simple programs? I'm sry if this is too many questions but im new here and i want to understand some of the experiences you had.
I started to learn programming using the Apple II Basic manual. I continued with a Fortran class in college (using punch cards) and then a Z80 assembly class. But I really learned how to program by doing it. For example, assembly language didn't click for me at first; I just couldn't wrap my brain around it. Then I wrote a small Apple II assembly program for something my brother needed and somewhere in the middle of it, everything fell into place. (Seriously, it was like a light turned on and suddenly everything about assembly language became crystal clear.) Years later, I was writing assembly code professionaly and needed to manage some data sets. I figured C was a better way to do that, so I grabbed the Turbo C manual and asked my boss a few questions and started coding. Two days later the light went on--C is nothing but a really great macro assembler! (I gather I'm one of the few people who never had a problem grasping pointers, but maybe not.) C++ took a little longer, but again, it took actually writing code for the proverbial light to go on. Same with MFC and Windows programming. So; get a good basic book and write code. Lots of it. Tons of it. Write yet another notepad or calculator or touch program (and then, please delete them--we aren't interested.) Also, write a test app; a simple framework and write code to test specific things. What to know out __strtoul() works, write a bunch of tests and step through them! Use the scientific method; hypothesis what a code snippet should do, write it, test it, analyze what it actualy did. If it failed, figure out why it didn't match your hypothesis. (Sometimes, I even have to figure out why it worked!) Repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Bottom line: You become good at anything by practice; lots of it. Be honestly self-critical and find a harsh critic. (Theory is nice, but nobody came, say, a great pianist by studying theory--they became great by practicing hours and hours a day and by submitting themselves up to criticism by those who are already great.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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How did you learn to program? Is it from the internet? a book? If from internet wut site and if book, wut book? I'm trying to learn any language like C++ or C# and i dont have any materials and dont know where to get some good sources. When you first learn your language, was it hard and how long did it take you to start to create simple programs? I'm sry if this is too many questions but im new here and i want to understand some of the experiences you had.
It all started with a weird obsession, reading all "computer" books I could get hold of, and fighting for computer access time. I worked out a lot on paper, and hacked it in / tested it on limited time. In a case I was lucky that the available books were few and terribly detailed. In todays culture of hug and plush education I would have drowned in talk without saying. Similary, the Internet might have killed my desire with (a) to much information and (b) to specific answers. Add multiple phases of jumping-into-the-water and throwing-myself-into-the-water. My first programs were written quickly and easily. Through all steps (roughly BASIC, Databases, Pascal, C++) the first steps were easy andthe posibilities seemed endless. Keeping a large project going is something completely different. So, I'm self-educated. I always dug in deeply. Many books, and a lot of internet in the later years. Read read read read, and filter.
Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Velopers, Develprs, Developers!
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
Linkify!|Fold With Us! -
How did you learn to program? Is it from the internet? a book? If from internet wut site and if book, wut book? I'm trying to learn any language like C++ or C# and i dont have any materials and dont know where to get some good sources. When you first learn your language, was it hard and how long did it take you to start to create simple programs? I'm sry if this is too many questions but im new here and i want to understand some of the experiences you had.
Code2326 wrote:
If from internet wut site and if book, wut book?
How did you learn to spell ? :P I learned from this site, and from various books.
Code2326 wrote:
When you first learn your language, was it hard and how long did it take you to start to create simple programs?
My first language was Applesoft BASIC. 6502 assembler is the only language I ever found hard, although it takes time to become a good programmer, and then it takes time to really learn a new language.
Christian Graus - C++ MVP 'Why don't we jump on a fad that hasn't already been widely discredited ?' - Dilbert
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How did you learn to program? Is it from the internet? a book? If from internet wut site and if book, wut book? I'm trying to learn any language like C++ or C# and i dont have any materials and dont know where to get some good sources. When you first learn your language, was it hard and how long did it take you to start to create simple programs? I'm sry if this is too many questions but im new here and i want to understand some of the experiences you had.
C64 Programmer's Reference Guide (it even came with a schematic) + various PC magazines + years of playing around writing C64 BASIC and 65xx Assembler. there was no internet in 1985.
image processing toolkits | batch image processing | blogging
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How did you learn to program? Is it from the internet? a book? If from internet wut site and if book, wut book? I'm trying to learn any language like C++ or C# and i dont have any materials and dont know where to get some good sources. When you first learn your language, was it hard and how long did it take you to start to create simple programs? I'm sry if this is too many questions but im new here and i want to understand some of the experiences you had.
Once I found CP and undstood more fully the concept, and proceedures for Cut&Paste I became a top notch, highly paid, but poorly qualified programmer...
Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth.- Vernor Vinge
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:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: The image that brought to mind is probably the funniest thing i've seen all day. :D
---- I just want you to be happy; That's my only little wish...
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How did you learn to program? Is it from the internet? a book? If from internet wut site and if book, wut book? I'm trying to learn any language like C++ or C# and i dont have any materials and dont know where to get some good sources. When you first learn your language, was it hard and how long did it take you to start to create simple programs? I'm sry if this is too many questions but im new here and i want to understand some of the experiences you had.
Code2326 wrote:
How did you learn to program?
Got sick of using the recipes in the books, so started trying to make my own.
---- I just want you to be happy; That's my only little wish...
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that and Dr Dobbs hadn't published it articles on Tiny Basic yet... ;) I did the assembly route too, first on a Xerox 930 (mainframe - 32K core memory) and then Intel 8008, Signetics 2650 [first processor with more than one (they had 2) register banks] and Motorola 6800 all at the same time followed by the 8080...then on to DEC machines and custom desktops using Motorola 68000 and 68020 processors...didn't get exposed to a real IBM PC until nearly 10 years later (mid 80s)...MS-DOS was still king but Quarterdeck was coming on strong with QEMM... Steve
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First lesson - an outdated book on FORTRAN II from the library. I read it 'cause I'd heard there was a computer at the college I planned to attend. Second lesson - a course in FORTRAN IV at college, with simple I/O and number crunching. Third (and most important) lesson - an Intel 8080 databook with opcodes in octal and binary. Wrote an OS, then an Assembler, entered via 1's and 0's on a panel full of toggle switches. Programming has got a bit less interesting since then, but much easier.:-D
"...a photo album is like Life, but flat and stuck to pages." - Shog9
hey, me too...I thought FORTRAN was an IBM mainframe model...CalPoly sure set me straight... :-O Steve
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You *do* surprise me :rolleyes: :-D
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Likewise from the ZX Spectrum manual (a little later than you, we didn't get our Spectrum until Christmas '84), plus some other books my Dad picked up. He worked for ICL (and still works for Fujitsu Services, which is what's left of ICL) as a programmer, so he already knew various languages anyway. I can't now recall if he bought the Z80 machine language books for himself or for me, but I certainly got use out of them! That was around 1990, IIRC. I took a bit of a look at C at this point but really didn't get it. I did some stuff with Visual Basic 1.0 in the early 1990s. I recall picking up a Pascal (Object Pascal) textbook from a library in about 1995, and that was the first time I really 'got' pointers (in retrospect, I must have understood them in assembly but not correlated the concepts). Then I went to University in 1996 and learned to program properly ;) Well, to be a bit more systematic about it anyway. While at Uni I picked up Ada, C, C++ and SQL (and a few more languages that I've never used again - actually you could count Ada in that).
Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
Mike Dimmick wrote:
Ada
That was my main language in the early to mid 90s - I learnt it doing safety-critical embedded systems and then when doing developing software tools on VAX/VMS, had a choice of Fortran, VAX assembly, C or Ada. VAX Ada just about won out! And then PCs happened, so I started doing C++ full-time...and haven't really stopped since then.
Mike Dimmick wrote:
I took a bit of a look at C at this point
I first learnt C on the Spectrum. Yep,
#includes with a cassette deck. Mmmm, nice X| -
How did you learn to program? Is it from the internet? a book? If from internet wut site and if book, wut book? I'm trying to learn any language like C++ or C# and i dont have any materials and dont know where to get some good sources. When you first learn your language, was it hard and how long did it take you to start to create simple programs? I'm sry if this is too many questions but im new here and i want to understand some of the experiences you had.
Internet? Ha! There was no such thing back then. ;) We'd buy or trade copies of magazines like Byte, Compute, Antic, etc. These magazines would have small programs listed in the back that you could type in. Granted they weren't all that exciting by today's standard, but it was pretty cool. Eventually we figured out different commands did and started writing our own little programs. It was all Basic back then for me, and a little bit of Logo at one point. Later on, I took some programming classes in high school and we learned Pascal and a little assembler. Then C++, RPG/400, COBOL, Basic, Fortran. Then I started teaching myself OOP, web development, yada, yada, yada.... To get your feet wet on basic concepts of programming try googling "introduction to programming" or similar phrases and wade through the gazillions of pages detailing variables, loops, conditional statements, memory, I/O, etc... Get a feel for the lay of the land with that info, then pick a language like C# or C++ and search for introductions/tutorials/etc. You should be able to find plenty of simple examples to get you programming a little and you'll be on your way. Be prepared to spend an enormous amount of time learning, experimenting, picking apart other people's code, etc. Good Luck.
BW
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-- Steven Wright -
How did you learn to program? Is it from the internet? a book? If from internet wut site and if book, wut book? I'm trying to learn any language like C++ or C# and i dont have any materials and dont know where to get some good sources. When you first learn your language, was it hard and how long did it take you to start to create simple programs? I'm sry if this is too many questions but im new here and i want to understand some of the experiences you had.
Logo and Apple basic were the first programming experiences I had. They were simple environments to work in. Then I went to University where I learnt lots of theory. My first job was C++ Windows development where I had a great mentor / boss. Learning a programming language is like learning a spoken language, you get better with practice and it takes a while until you can start "thinking" in that language. A good book is Thinking in C++ 2nd Edition by Bruce Eckel which is available free at: http://www.mindview.net/Books/TICPP/ThinkingInCPP2e.html[^] This site also has links to free compilers. Although you might want to get the express edition of Microsoft Visual Studio if you are also interested in C#. Try Googling for "c++ tutorial" there is heaps of stuff out there.
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How did you learn to program? Is it from the internet? a book? If from internet wut site and if book, wut book? I'm trying to learn any language like C++ or C# and i dont have any materials and dont know where to get some good sources. When you first learn your language, was it hard and how long did it take you to start to create simple programs? I'm sry if this is too many questions but im new here and i want to understand some of the experiences you had.
My first contact with computer programming was in oh about '86 I think (when I was 10 years old). I'd got a C64 in Christmas and was absolutely crazy about it (of course). A few months later, after being totally engulfed in Hero[^] and Green Beret[^] I just had to learn graphics programming. So I tried to learn some BASIC and some years later I signed up for some Pascal classes, where we programmed on IBM XT which had these great keyboards with keys that made very loud click noises. Oh those were the days. I was happy with simple native code and a simple DOS Pascal "IDE" :|:suss:
"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." - Paul Erdos (1913-1996)
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How did you learn to program? Is it from the internet? a book? If from internet wut site and if book, wut book? I'm trying to learn any language like C++ or C# and i dont have any materials and dont know where to get some good sources. When you first learn your language, was it hard and how long did it take you to start to create simple programs? I'm sry if this is too many questions but im new here and i want to understand some of the experiences you had.
Writing BASIC, Pascal and Z80 assembler applications on an Apple /// (with a Z80 co-processor; the Apple used a 6502).
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"