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  3. What was the "Next Big Thing" when you started programming?

What was the "Next Big Thing" when you started programming?

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  • N NormDroid

    Go on then what us was you was using - pebbles in the dirt?

    All right, you guys, I got eight crates of Ipecac from Mort. All on my tab. Now, whoever goes the longest without puking gets the last piece of pie in the fridge.

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    martin_hughes
    wrote on last edited by
    #33

    He had pebbles and dirt? The lucky, lucky, lucky b'stard. What i wouldn't have given to have pebbles and dirt!

    Books written by CP members

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    • J Judah Gabriel Himango

      NGWS ...I don't remember that name! Heh.

      Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon

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      Pete OHanlon
      wrote on last edited by
      #34

      Judah Himango wrote:

      NGWS

      Next Generation Windows Services.

      "WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith

      As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.

      My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Onyx

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      • M martin_hughes

        He had pebbles and dirt? The lucky, lucky, lucky b'stard. What i wouldn't have given to have pebbles and dirt!

        Books written by CP members

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        Pete OHanlon
        wrote on last edited by
        #35

        We used to look up to people who had pebbles. They were posh.

        "WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith

        As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.

        My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Onyx

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        • J Judah Gabriel Himango

          Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.

          Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
          Judah Himango

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          Lost User
          wrote on last edited by
          #36

          Getting a RAM pack for my spectrum! Oh, and hacking free willy programs. After that I left it alone for quite a few years, came back to it in the 90s. Java was geting serious hype back then. COM was also coming on scene. And seems to be going off scene pretty quick. What an absoloute waste of time COM is.

          Morality is indistinguishable from social proscription

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          • J Judah Gabriel Himango

            Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.

            Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
            Judah Himango

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            Gonzoox
            wrote on last edited by
            #37

            Coding your own "Montezuma's Revenge" that was a pretty cool piece of code... My first application was made with Basic :) imagine how powerful I felt when I got to do something with Cobol (remember the turtle??)

            I want to die like my grandfather- asleep, not like the passengers in his car, screaming!

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            • J Judah Gabriel Himango

              Cool. I've never heard of CGA.

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              Ian Shlasko
              wrote on last edited by
              #38

              Youngun :) There was CGA, then MCGA, EGA, VGA, SVGA... And you probably know the rest. I remember working with 16 colors, aptly numbered 0 to 15 (After that it looped through the first 16, but flashing).

              Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in?
              Author of Guardians of Xen (Sci-Fi/Fantasy novel)

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              • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.

                Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
                Judah Himango

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                TheIdleProgrammer
                wrote on last edited by
                #39

                Great post! I'm a mere pup in this industry, I don't think I've ever witnessed the 'Next Big Thing' so it's interesting to hear what some of the old guard come up with. If I'm honest I guess I consider C++ to be old-fashioned ;P - clearing memory up after yourself is so 'last Tuesday'.

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                • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                  Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.

                  Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
                  Judah Himango

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                  Lost User
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #40

                  7 layer communication protocols, now .net has changed to wcf

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                  • M martin_hughes

                    The 16Kb RAM expansion pack for the ZX81 :D

                    Books written by CP members

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                    stephen hazel
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #41

                    and don't forget their awesome tape drives... never knew for SURE if that program was gonna load back in. and heaven help you if you bumped that ram pack - bzzt - reboot. It taught me Z80, though. (and i never used it again) then c64=>amiga(msdos@school)=>macClassic(big step back)=>win95,me(rats),xp Almost time for 7 :)

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                    • M martin_hughes

                      The 16Kb RAM expansion pack for the ZX81 :D

                      Books written by CP members

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                      Nagy Vilmos
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #42

                      You bad! I remember those at school.


                      Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. or "Drink. Get drunk. Fall over." - P O'H

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                      • L Lost User

                        Getting a RAM pack for my spectrum! Oh, and hacking free willy programs. After that I left it alone for quite a few years, came back to it in the 90s. Java was geting serious hype back then. COM was also coming on scene. And seems to be going off scene pretty quick. What an absoloute waste of time COM is.

                        Morality is indistinguishable from social proscription

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                        Nagy Vilmos
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #43

                        fat_boy wrote:

                        hacking free willy programs

                        I've got a blitz basic port of Manic Miner and I have just, like in the last couple of days, started looking at re-writing it using a different platform - maybe even J2ME to run on my phone.


                        Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. or "Drink. Get drunk. Fall over." - P O'H

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                        • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                          Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.

                          Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
                          Judah Himango

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                          realJSOP
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #44

                          Punch cards was just a rumor when I started programming...

                          .45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly
                          -----
                          "Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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                          • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                            Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.

                            Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
                            Judah Himango

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                            Shog9 0
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #45

                            I've no idea, didn't know at the time, and didn't care either. Was completely enamored with this ancient BASIC interpreter I'd happened upon. I do remember one of my younger brothers getting all excited about Java a few years later.

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                            • P Pete OHanlon

                              We used to look up to people who had pebbles. They were posh.

                              "WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith

                              As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.

                              My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Onyx

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                              Nagy Vilmos
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #46

                              We'll we called them pebbles, but they were really just little grains of sand. But they were pubbles to us! We was reet proud in those days.


                              Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. or "Drink. Get drunk. Fall over." - P O'H

                              OriginalGriffO 1 Reply Last reply
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                              • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                                Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.

                                Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
                                Judah Himango

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                                PIEBALDconsult
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #47

                                I started programming in high school (1983). So the IBM PC was out, but no one I knew had one. Therefore I wasn't aware of any buzz about "the next big thing" -- I'm sure that people working in the industry knew what was going on, and may have been buzzed about the advent of the Macintosh X|. In high school and my first college we used DEC systems (PDP and VAX) so, again, not much buzz about "the next big thing" -- maybe the biggest was getting Whitesmith's C on the VAX, but the teachers didn't know how to compile it! X| My second college had VAXen and 386s, and there was significant buzz -- about OS2! Ooh, you shoulda heard the idiots going on about how great OS2 was gonna be and how it was gonna kill DOS! :rolleyes: Turbo Pascal v5.0 and Turbo C++ v1.0 were released while I was in college; I jumped right on them. Another important "next big thing" for me in those days was the Alpha chip (1992). After that, really only C# qualifies, I got real excited when I read the first spec (1999), and was disappointed to learn that Microsoft wouldn't release a compiler until "the next version of Visual Studio"! X| (2002! :wtf: ) Generally, the bigger the hype, the bigger the flop -- don't pay attention to hype, don't be an early adopter.

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                                • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                                  Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.

                                  Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
                                  Judah Himango

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                                  Russell Jones
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #48

                                  Colour was the next big thing when I started programming although a lot of people couldn't really see the point in it :~ When I started programming commercially we were really into COM+, it was the answer to everything, apparently (it wasn't so much like .net as like remoting). What it really did for us was to add another point of failure and an extra layer of network bottleneck between the clients and so created applications that were much harder to debug than the Client Server they replaced. We also had Thin clients when NT4 Terminal Services edition came out, soon to be replaced by rich clients when .Net took over. There was XML, nothing makes an application run so badly as something that takes some data from a database creates an enormous xml document transforms that document repeatedly into other documents and then spouts out some xhtml at the end (but hey we only need 2 stored procs now) There's OOP for websites where we used to create massive hierarchies of objects so we could make one method call and then dispose of the objects only to create them again when the user clicked submit.

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                                  • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                                    Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.

                                    Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
                                    Judah Himango

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                                    Gary Kirkham
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #49

                                    I remember when we got our first CRT terminal and didn't have to use punch cards anymore. :jig:

                                    Gary Kirkham Forever Forgiven and Alive in the Spirit It's against my relationship to have a religion. Me blog, You read

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                                    • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                                      Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.

                                      Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
                                      Judah Himango

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                                      Gregory Gadow
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #50

                                      They were something out of Dick Tracy. The very idea that computers were small enough and affordable enough for home and desk was incredibly futuristic. And, of course, I wanted in. My first computer was a Commodore 64. I loved the thing: the 6510 processor had an versatile and easy to learn assembly code, and its sound chips, built-in sprite graphics capability and RS-232 ports made it an amazing hobby computer. I wrote games, a voice synthesizer and even a programmable robotic arm for that thing. And it plugged into a television set and had full CGA graphics: no boring monochrome for me! I don't think there's been a personal computer with as much potential as the Commodore.

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                                      • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                                        Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.

                                        Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
                                        Judah Himango

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                                        Brady Kelly
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #51

                                        ASP, COM, DCOM

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                                        • M martin_hughes

                                          He had pebbles and dirt? The lucky, lucky, lucky b'stard. What i wouldn't have given to have pebbles and dirt!

                                          Books written by CP members

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                                          peterchen
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #52

                                          When I started, we had them. Had to walk two miles uphill both ways in snow to fetch them, though.

                                          Agh! Reality! My Archnemesis![^]
                                          | FoldWithUs! | sighist | µLaunch - program launcher for server core and hyper-v server.

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