programming
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Let's straighten this confusion up right now. I'm a self-taught programmer from books from Barnes and Nobles, took only one class at Tidewater Community College in C++ programming and C programming in UNIX/LINUX into one class. I'm currently in Axia College and all they teach is a bunch of classes that consume your time and money in believing somebody is getting a career when most of the credits apply to academics instead of the intended major(programming, is what I am getting at here. What I've seen in these classes are some good and some bad things. Some good things that the programming class in C++ taught some very good items about classes and other basic things, but that' all. I just don't call myself a programmer unless I can prove that I can program. I guess that I am an intermediate programmer that is self-taught and have been writing codes for some time now since my arrival in Virginia from 2066. I started to program during 2008 until now. I intend to produce a game or something that is useful for the media, and thus getting some advice from other people out there are in the same field as me. I know, I expect more if I am paying some cash for this class. From the UNIX class I learned a few things, other than the operating system UNIX/LINUX, such as a hello world program(it is useless unless it's made for beginner's)and taught some things about opening and closing a file with fopen and fclose functions, which was neat and all but those were the simplest of things that some employers would laugh at. The reason why I want somebody to email me is to get people across the globe to acknowledge what I'm going instead of in a small geographic area, which is useless and wouldn't get me far. I basically don't want anybody to debug this program, but to provide a portfolio the media instead of blabbing about what I can and cannot do to random people but people with some experience, that can give me pointers how to make it better or what would the public want in these codes for a game or an application.
What happened to all the formatting, structured sentences, paragraphs etc. That is just a block of text that is painful on the eyes, such that I doubt many will even read it.
Dave Find Me On: Web|Facebook|Twitter|LinkedIn CPRepWatcher now available as Packaged Chrome Extension, visit my articles for link.
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I've been a programmer without school training for 3 years now and I cannot even imagine where to start. Is there anybody out there that can help me get started, other than going to some stupid school for training(I'm already at school and they hardly teach crap about programming in a vast way but in a watered-down version). I've created a command-prompt based game where it asks you trivia questions at random of which I wrote to print messages to the screen if they were right or wrong and then continue to the next question. It took me about an hour to come up with some questions and then compiled it, ran it, and tested it. It runs fine. If anybody wants to see the code, I can email it to your email address if you want. If you have any questions or would like codes from me, email me at computerman.hosey@yahoo.com or jerseydude23@hotmail.com don't worry I'm not a fisher that will steal any pertinent information from you. All I want is some recognition from programming, that's all I ask.
Most of the older guys here are self-taught. I learned by finding something I wanted to do with software, and writing the code to do that thing. I also went o trade school, but that was exclusively mainframe coding (COBOL, RPG-2, PL/1, IBM 360 Assembly Language, etc. The fanciest personal computers around only had 4K of RAM and you had to store your programs on a cassette tape. The IBM PC was still 3 years from becoming reality. My first real PC program was for the Turbo Pascal 2.0 editor/compiler (written with Turbo Pascal), and allowed you to change the colors of various parts of the editor. I wrote it because someone said it couldn't be done. You have to develop a similar attitude and work ethic. Oh yeah, here's some bad news - if you don't already have 20+ years in the business, you're probably going to need a degree to get your foot in the door for more interesting (and more lucrative) work.
.45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly
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"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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"The staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - J. Jystad, 2001 -
What happened to all the formatting, structured sentences, paragraphs etc. That is just a block of text that is painful on the eyes, such that I doubt many will even read it.
Dave Find Me On: Web|Facebook|Twitter|LinkedIn CPRepWatcher now available as Packaged Chrome Extension, visit my articles for link.
Probably never went to school. You know, one of THOSE types. :rolleyes:
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I've been a programmer without school training for 3 years now and I cannot even imagine where to start. Is there anybody out there that can help me get started, other than going to some stupid school for training(I'm already at school and they hardly teach crap about programming in a vast way but in a watered-down version). I've created a command-prompt based game where it asks you trivia questions at random of which I wrote to print messages to the screen if they were right or wrong and then continue to the next question. It took me about an hour to come up with some questions and then compiled it, ran it, and tested it. It runs fine. If anybody wants to see the code, I can email it to your email address if you want. If you have any questions or would like codes from me, email me at computerman.hosey@yahoo.com or jerseydude23@hotmail.com don't worry I'm not a fisher that will steal any pertinent information from you. All I want is some recognition from programming, that's all I ask.
Timothy Hosey wrote:
All I want is some recognition from programming, that's all I ask.
Then start writing articles for CP. That's what I did, for pretty much the same reasons at first, and I don't have any formal school training and would never want any. Marc
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Most of the older guys here are self-taught. I learned by finding something I wanted to do with software, and writing the code to do that thing. I also went o trade school, but that was exclusively mainframe coding (COBOL, RPG-2, PL/1, IBM 360 Assembly Language, etc. The fanciest personal computers around only had 4K of RAM and you had to store your programs on a cassette tape. The IBM PC was still 3 years from becoming reality. My first real PC program was for the Turbo Pascal 2.0 editor/compiler (written with Turbo Pascal), and allowed you to change the colors of various parts of the editor. I wrote it because someone said it couldn't be done. You have to develop a similar attitude and work ethic. Oh yeah, here's some bad news - if you don't already have 20+ years in the business, you're probably going to need a degree to get your foot in the door for more interesting (and more lucrative) work.
.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
-----
"The staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - J. Jystad, 2001 -
I've been a programmer without school training for 3 years now and I cannot even imagine where to start. Is there anybody out there that can help me get started, other than going to some stupid school for training(I'm already at school and they hardly teach crap about programming in a vast way but in a watered-down version). I've created a command-prompt based game where it asks you trivia questions at random of which I wrote to print messages to the screen if they were right or wrong and then continue to the next question. It took me about an hour to come up with some questions and then compiled it, ran it, and tested it. It runs fine. If anybody wants to see the code, I can email it to your email address if you want. If you have any questions or would like codes from me, email me at computerman.hosey@yahoo.com or jerseydude23@hotmail.com don't worry I'm not a fisher that will steal any pertinent information from you. All I want is some recognition from programming, that's all I ask.
Perhaps this is going to go slightly off the topic, but as some of the other posters have already pointed out, you should probably go to school. That is, "school" and not higher education institutions like colleges and universities. Maybe then you will learn to write coherent pieces of text. Having said that, I understand "school" means something slightly different on either ends of the Atlantic, so moving on to your complaint about how you find your classes useless... I suggest you enroll in something other than programming. Programming languages and methods evolve every day. What you are taught today is probably old art tomorrow. Sure, some people will find programming classes useful, and good luck to them. I'm a self-taught programmer myself, but I trained as an all-rounder engineer at university, then specialized in data processing by data driven statistical methods as a post-grad. Now I work in a comprehensive engineering environment where, of course, I work on the software side of a complex scientific instrumentation development. Programming skills are taken as given here. What's more important is the ability to adapt and learn about the various types of instruments we develop and how they are used in the field. We also need to bear in mind where the work carried out by our customers are heading, so I need to understand a bit of genetics, a bit of chemistry, a bit of medicine... As far as I'm concerned, programming is a method for achieving some goal and not the goal itself. I suppose there are people that think otherwise, and I don't mean to say that's wrong. But you seem to be a young person with a long career ahead of yourself. I think it would be more beneficial for you to try to think about the bigger picture, especially as you are only just setting out... Cheers, Your Nan ;P
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
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Let's straighten this confusion up right now. I'm a self-taught programmer from books from Barnes and Nobles, took only one class at Tidewater Community College in C++ programming and C programming in UNIX/LINUX into one class. I'm currently in Axia College and all they teach is a bunch of classes that consume your time and money in believing somebody is getting a career when most of the credits apply to academics instead of the intended major(programming, is what I am getting at here. What I've seen in these classes are some good and some bad things. Some good things that the programming class in C++ taught some very good items about classes and other basic things, but that' all. I just don't call myself a programmer unless I can prove that I can program. I guess that I am an intermediate programmer that is self-taught and have been writing codes for some time now since my arrival in Virginia from 2066. I started to program during 2008 until now. I intend to produce a game or something that is useful for the media, and thus getting some advice from other people out there are in the same field as me. I know, I expect more if I am paying some cash for this class. From the UNIX class I learned a few things, other than the operating system UNIX/LINUX, such as a hello world program(it is useless unless it's made for beginner's)and taught some things about opening and closing a file with fopen and fclose functions, which was neat and all but those were the simplest of things that some employers would laugh at. The reason why I want somebody to email me is to get people across the globe to acknowledge what I'm going instead of in a small geographic area, which is useless and wouldn't get me far. I basically don't want anybody to debug this program, but to provide a portfolio the media instead of blabbing about what I can and cannot do to random people but people with some experience, that can give me pointers how to make it better or what would the public want in these codes for a game or an application.
School is never going to teach you how to write an actual business application. School teaches you how to learn about programming, or to drink copious amounts and not pay attention. I personally didn't see the benefits of school, found myself a low paying junior developer role and just kept on working at it. It's taken me 11 years and some pretty good breaks to get to where I am. If I had the option, I would have sucked it up and got the education, just because of the opportunities that may have been presented. You're in school, see out the education, get the certificates that say you know what you're talking about and spend the rest of your time reading, learning and writing sample code. Don't expect to write the next MS Windows tomorrow or become a billionaire overnight. It isn't going to happen.
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The point of a college degree anymore is to show that you have the will to stay with something for a long time. It shows that you can accomplish tasks and are well rounded. If the classes are easy for you and boring that leaves more time for :beer: and :jig: While at college you can get an internship which would give you the experience you're looking for. Sure it costs money but it's also a lot more fun than a 9 to 5 job if you can afford it :-D
------------------------------------- Do not do what has already been done. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.. but it ROCKS absolutely, too.
agreed .. from where did you download the 'dancing man' smiley. Somehow, I see only limited list in the CP Reply tool-bar.
Sucess is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
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So you're saying you have programs as old as me then? ;P
------------------------------------- Do not do what has already been done. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.. but it ROCKS absolutely, too.
Yes bro. In short, he wanted to say he has been coding since half of the CP Members were in nappies. :laugh:
Sucess is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
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Weird post. That you'd give your email addresses in a public forum makes me think you're young and generally inexperienced in life. I am not worried that you're a spammer, but I'm sure you will get spam. I taught myself to code, and talked my way in to a job, within 6 months. Is it work that you're asking about ? The path for me was self taught, get a job, then when I worked with people who were university trained, I'd pay attention to what they'd discuss, and when they'd mention something I did not understand, I'd buy a book and work through it, so that I did understand it. School is not a bad thing, but if you know some stuff already and you're in a class for beginners, that school is obviously catering to the other students and ignoring what you already know. I taught myself b/c I was mature age and it suited me to keep working and paying my mortgage while I learned.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
Christian, what you mentioned is really inspirational. However, the same way may not work for many. Especially, in my homeland, where we have huge number of Software Engineers virtually unemployed, no one would pay attention to a self learned or non-degree holder. I am in this industry for a small time (4.5 years), however, I have seen some extremely talented designers and contractors struggled for years. Many of them are highly paid at this point, however, it took them years to get that recognition, whereas, if you are graduated from a reputed university the entry point becomes lot simpler to you. I have written this based on my experience in India and this case may not be same in western countries.
Sucess is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
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agreed .. from where did you download the 'dancing man' smiley. Somehow, I see only limited list in the CP Reply tool-bar.
Sucess is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
:jig:
Dave
Binging is like googling, it just feels dirtier. Please take your VB.NET out of our nice case sensitive forum. Astonish us. Be exceptional. (Pete O'Hanlon)
BTW, in software, hope and pray is not a viable strategy. (Luc Pattyn) -
Yes bro. In short, he wanted to say he has been coding since half of the CP Members were in nappies. :laugh:
Sucess is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
That's probably true.
I have CDO, it's OCD with the letters in the right order; just as they ruddy well should be
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
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Christian, what you mentioned is really inspirational. However, the same way may not work for many. Especially, in my homeland, where we have huge number of Software Engineers virtually unemployed, no one would pay attention to a self learned or non-degree holder. I am in this industry for a small time (4.5 years), however, I have seen some extremely talented designers and contractors struggled for years. Many of them are highly paid at this point, however, it took them years to get that recognition, whereas, if you are graduated from a reputed university the entry point becomes lot simpler to you. I have written this based on my experience in India and this case may not be same in western countries.
Sucess is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Sushant Joshi wrote:
Christian, what you mentioned is really inspirational. However, the same way may not work for many. Especially, in my homeland, where we have huge number of Software Engineers virtually unemployed, no one would pay attention to a self learned or non-degree holder. I am in this industry for a small time (4.5 years), however, I have seen some extremely talented designers and contractors struggled for years. Many of them are highly paid at this point, however, it took them years to get that recognition, whereas, if you are graduated from a reputed university the entry point becomes lot simpler to you. I have written this based on my experience in India and this case may not be same in western countries.
good one:thumbsup:
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I've been a programmer without school training for 3 years now and I cannot even imagine where to start. Is there anybody out there that can help me get started, other than going to some stupid school for training(I'm already at school and they hardly teach crap about programming in a vast way but in a watered-down version). I've created a command-prompt based game where it asks you trivia questions at random of which I wrote to print messages to the screen if they were right or wrong and then continue to the next question. It took me about an hour to come up with some questions and then compiled it, ran it, and tested it. It runs fine. If anybody wants to see the code, I can email it to your email address if you want. If you have any questions or would like codes from me, email me at computerman.hosey@yahoo.com or jerseydude23@hotmail.com don't worry I'm not a fisher that will steal any pertinent information from you. All I want is some recognition from programming, that's all I ask.
Timothy Hosey wrote:
All I want is some recognition from programming
I speak for myself here; don't know if anyone else agrees with me. Timothy, don't get into programming just for the recognition...you will never get it, it can be a very thankless job. We program because we love it and love doing it whether someone gives a shit whether or not we pulled an "all-nighter" to get the job done.
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Yes bro. In short, he wanted to say he has been coding since half of the CP Members were in nappies. :laugh:
Sucess is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
... another half of them will probably be wearing nappies again in a couple of years time!
.\\axxx
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Let's straighten this confusion up right now. I'm a self-taught programmer from books from Barnes and Nobles, took only one class at Tidewater Community College in C++ programming and C programming in UNIX/LINUX into one class. I'm currently in Axia College and all they teach is a bunch of classes that consume your time and money in believing somebody is getting a career when most of the credits apply to academics instead of the intended major(programming, is what I am getting at here. What I've seen in these classes are some good and some bad things. Some good things that the programming class in C++ taught some very good items about classes and other basic things, but that' all. I just don't call myself a programmer unless I can prove that I can program. I guess that I am an intermediate programmer that is self-taught and have been writing codes for some time now since my arrival in Virginia from 2066. I started to program during 2008 until now. I intend to produce a game or something that is useful for the media, and thus getting some advice from other people out there are in the same field as me. I know, I expect more if I am paying some cash for this class. From the UNIX class I learned a few things, other than the operating system UNIX/LINUX, such as a hello world program(it is useless unless it's made for beginner's)and taught some things about opening and closing a file with fopen and fclose functions, which was neat and all but those were the simplest of things that some employers would laugh at. The reason why I want somebody to email me is to get people across the globe to acknowledge what I'm going instead of in a small geographic area, which is useless and wouldn't get me far. I basically don't want anybody to debug this program, but to provide a portfolio the media instead of blabbing about what I can and cannot do to random people but people with some experience, that can give me pointers how to make it better or what would the public want in these codes for a game or an application.
One of the most important things that I look for when hiring anyone, programmers or not, is the ability to communicate clearly and intelligently. I would suggest you start there.
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Timothy Hosey wrote:
All I want is some recognition from programming
I speak for myself here; don't know if anyone else agrees with me. Timothy, don't get into programming just for the recognition...you will never get it, it can be a very thankless job. We program because we love it and love doing it whether someone gives a shit whether or not we pulled an "all-nighter" to get the job done.
Recognition comes with experience: The more you do, the more you know, the more you know, the more opinionated you become, the more opinionated you become, the more knowledgeable you become, and then after that, you become recognized. In South Africa - if everything works out perfectly - you can become a doctor at the age of 26: - Start studying at 18 - Finish your BSc degree at 21 (3 year course) - Finish your Hons degree at 22 (1 year course) - Finish your Masters degree at 24 (2 years) - Finish your PhD degree at 26 (2 year course - if everything goes perfectly) But, you still won't get recognition until you have gained the sufficient amount of experience, which might take between 10 and 20 years. I'm at university, studying BSc IT, a nice course since they teach you not only computer science, but also a bit of math and business aspects, which gives a well rounded IT degree. I must admit, about 80 - 90% of what I know about programming is self taught, the rest comes from university. A waste of money? No, it gives you good exposure of what happens in the IT industry and *forces* you to do some research in the field. I wrote a couple of stuff throughout my years (my first programming done in Pascal way back in 2003), but I know that I still have a lot more to learn. When you start with your first big project - like the one I am busy with now as part of the course I am studying, you learn a lot of stuff very quickly, since time is not a lot, and your fighting to pass and get distinctions. If I were you, I would find a school that would keep me motivated and interested. Worried about the money? Don't be, get a loan - I'm speaking with SA knowledge - and study. Luckily IT is a well paying field, so you will pay of you debt in about 2 to 3 years.
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I've been a programmer without school training for 3 years now and I cannot even imagine where to start. Is there anybody out there that can help me get started, other than going to some stupid school for training(I'm already at school and they hardly teach crap about programming in a vast way but in a watered-down version). I've created a command-prompt based game where it asks you trivia questions at random of which I wrote to print messages to the screen if they were right or wrong and then continue to the next question. It took me about an hour to come up with some questions and then compiled it, ran it, and tested it. It runs fine. If anybody wants to see the code, I can email it to your email address if you want. If you have any questions or would like codes from me, email me at computerman.hosey@yahoo.com or jerseydude23@hotmail.com don't worry I'm not a fisher that will steal any pertinent information from you. All I want is some recognition from programming, that's all I ask.
These days you don't have to go to just one school. MIT, Stanford, and others have courses online. You don't get the degree, but you can get the degree from one school and augment with courses online. You can start here: http://www.apple.com/education/guidedtours/itunesu.html But look directly on the Stanford and MIT sites and do a little Googling and you should be able to turn up their links. Sorry I don't have them, off-hand.
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I've been a programmer without school training for 3 years now and I cannot even imagine where to start. Is there anybody out there that can help me get started, other than going to some stupid school for training(I'm already at school and they hardly teach crap about programming in a vast way but in a watered-down version). I've created a command-prompt based game where it asks you trivia questions at random of which I wrote to print messages to the screen if they were right or wrong and then continue to the next question. It took me about an hour to come up with some questions and then compiled it, ran it, and tested it. It runs fine. If anybody wants to see the code, I can email it to your email address if you want. If you have any questions or would like codes from me, email me at computerman.hosey@yahoo.com or jerseydude23@hotmail.com don't worry I'm not a fisher that will steal any pertinent information from you. All I want is some recognition from programming, that's all I ask.
Despite years of experience writing software (noted in the next paragraph), I couldn't get any interest from employers (as a programmer) until I was given a break (because I'd worked cheap). Once I had a job that was 'really' programming (as in job title), things changed. Basically, no one wants to be the first to gamble on you. As for the application you described. Consider what I brought to the table: instrument automation and real-time data acquisition; Monte-Carlo models of nearest-neighbor surface phenomena (which I proved experimentally, as well), and even an offer from the publisher Marcel-Decker to author or edit a book on 'computers in chemistry'. I also created the PC version of a practice game for the Cray Research/US Dept of Energy sponsored National Science Bowl. You'd think that would do it for experience? Well, all of the above were done with a job title that was basically 'research chemist'. So no one was interested. Times may have changed, but with the outsourcing of coding to low-cost labor markets, I don't think the change was for the better. Edit in note: all programmers in my current location are self-taught. It's that foot in the door that'll kill ya'
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek dissappointment. If you are searching for perfection in yourself, then you seek failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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I've been a programmer without school training for 3 years now and I cannot even imagine where to start. Is there anybody out there that can help me get started, other than going to some stupid school for training(I'm already at school and they hardly teach crap about programming in a vast way but in a watered-down version). I've created a command-prompt based game where it asks you trivia questions at random of which I wrote to print messages to the screen if they were right or wrong and then continue to the next question. It took me about an hour to come up with some questions and then compiled it, ran it, and tested it. It runs fine. If anybody wants to see the code, I can email it to your email address if you want. If you have any questions or would like codes from me, email me at computerman.hosey@yahoo.com or jerseydude23@hotmail.com don't worry I'm not a fisher that will steal any pertinent information from you. All I want is some recognition from programming, that's all I ask.
I'm self taught and my first job was an internship with a very low salary. Start it this way. When you get recognized you get better payment plus you'll have proven experience. If you want recognition, you need to show you're work, even if you're working for free. Just do it.