How did you become a professional programmer?
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When I was about 13, 1992, one day I can't remember why but I bought a book like "teach yourself c++ in N days", the book ships with a floppy that includes a borland C++ ide, I follow the instruction line by line to install the ide, then copy line by line the sample source code, and had my first Hello World program compiled and run successfully. But honestly, I found myself can't actually understand what pointer is after reading the pointer chapters over and over for N times, so I gave up, in fact at that time, I don't even know what I was doing, what is compiling, what is linking, what is parsing, I have no idea, to me, I just write some code, then press a button, wow, I have a running program! Later I move to Visual Basic, I found that for people who first learn to program, having an immediate visual respond is really a big plus and encouragement to keep learning. I did keep learning Visual Basic for many years, from the very basic up to finding a need to call into Win32 api. After .NET was first introduced, I fall in love with C#, it is clean, easy to understand, and powerful, I love this language. When I feel that I can make a living by providing C# based solution, I started a company to do so. The business is still doing fine at this point.
It all starting with creating a blinking Christmas tree in BASIC back in junior high. Upon reaching college, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I started off at a two year college, the CIS degree was needing students so my adviser asked me to give that a try. :cool:
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I started back in 73 (I was 14) on an ASR-33 connected to an HP-2000 via accoustic coupler. I learned pointers while taking an Assembly class at Control Data Institute. I had over-written my Base Pointer for my project. Once the instructor explained what I had done, I had a much better idea of what they were and how they were used. Needless to say, these days, many programmers don't understand them (and don't have to with the tools available today). The nuts and bolts of my assembly days are no longer necessary learning. I guess I'm old.
Naaaa, it's always good to know the "nuts and bolts" of what's going on. My first computer course was in '77. I was a junior in high school and we wrote our programs in Fortran, created the punch cards in class, then took them to city hall to run them on the city's mainframe. I flunked my first college computer class, I wasn't intrested in using the punch cards and Fortran to do DB programs, I was more interested in the mini-mainframes in the main computer room that I could write GRAPHICS programs for (and save on... wait for it... punch TAPE!) I took a computer architecture class (when I finally went back to college) in '85 and an assembly course (used an 8088). I think those were the best courses for understanding what the computer is really doing each time you make a call or store something in memory. Makes me really appreciate the programming advancements... though you can't beat assembly for shear speed! I got into programming by accident. Started out drafting, earned a Materials Engineering degree, taught myself AutoCad (on DOS). I started writing lisp to do the grunt work for me, then parametric programs connecting to an Oracle DB I set up on an AS400 (the company financials server), then Quick Basic w/ Assembly. From there I took a job as a "real" programmer. :-D
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When I was about 13, 1992, one day I can't remember why but I bought a book like "teach yourself c++ in N days", the book ships with a floppy that includes a borland C++ ide, I follow the instruction line by line to install the ide, then copy line by line the sample source code, and had my first Hello World program compiled and run successfully. But honestly, I found myself can't actually understand what pointer is after reading the pointer chapters over and over for N times, so I gave up, in fact at that time, I don't even know what I was doing, what is compiling, what is linking, what is parsing, I have no idea, to me, I just write some code, then press a button, wow, I have a running program! Later I move to Visual Basic, I found that for people who first learn to program, having an immediate visual respond is really a big plus and encouragement to keep learning. I did keep learning Visual Basic for many years, from the very basic up to finding a need to call into Win32 api. After .NET was first introduced, I fall in love with C#, it is clean, easy to understand, and powerful, I love this language. When I feel that I can make a living by providing C# based solution, I started a company to do so. The business is still doing fine at this point.
I was a hungry engineering student, so I applied for a job as a research assistant doing programming. That was 40 years ago ...
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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When I was about 13, 1992, one day I can't remember why but I bought a book like "teach yourself c++ in N days", the book ships with a floppy that includes a borland C++ ide, I follow the instruction line by line to install the ide, then copy line by line the sample source code, and had my first Hello World program compiled and run successfully. But honestly, I found myself can't actually understand what pointer is after reading the pointer chapters over and over for N times, so I gave up, in fact at that time, I don't even know what I was doing, what is compiling, what is linking, what is parsing, I have no idea, to me, I just write some code, then press a button, wow, I have a running program! Later I move to Visual Basic, I found that for people who first learn to program, having an immediate visual respond is really a big plus and encouragement to keep learning. I did keep learning Visual Basic for many years, from the very basic up to finding a need to call into Win32 api. After .NET was first introduced, I fall in love with C#, it is clean, easy to understand, and powerful, I love this language. When I feel that I can make a living by providing C# based solution, I started a company to do so. The business is still doing fine at this point.
I had an extra period in high school, and we had a model 026 keypunch. I decided to learn to program. There was this horrible "programmed learning" course from IBM. No grownups who knew anything, of course. I could punch a deck and *mail* it downtown to the public schools central office where it was run on the IBM 360, and mailed back to me eventually. It took 3 weeks for a round trip. Then I'd get an error message like, "expecting operator but , before J was found." and that would be all she wrote. I don't think I ever got a successful compile. The same room with the keybunch had a mechanical calculator. You could enter a long division problem at random and then wait for 15 seconds of "ka-chunk-a-chunk-a-chunk-a" while it ground out the solution, one decimal digit at a time. You had to place the decimal point in the result yourself. At the university, I took a 2-credit programming class featuring PDP-8 assembly language, emulated on a Cyber 6600 mainframe. The grad student leading the class had no concept of programming. When I asked "What should we name our variables?", he said "anything you want. Call them 'Kirk', 'Spock', and 'McCoy' if you like. So I did. The teacher didn't explain, and I didn't understand, the difference between symbolic constants (like for branch addresses) and variables, which, after all, were both alphanumeric constructs that held a numeric value. It took me a long time to figure this out sufficiently to get my assembler code (also on punched card decks) to work. On the strength of this vast programming experience, I answered an ad in the university newspaper for a programmer, and my career began. I was programming an Olivetti microprocessor called the A5, basically a posting machine (imagine a selectric typewriter on steroids) with a 4-bit microprocessor, about 2k bytes of memory, and a 256-byte magnetic stripe card reader. My GPA and the entry requirements of the Computer Science department crossed during exactly one academic quarter, which was the quarter I happened to choose to apply, and the rest is history. I was in the last class of undergraduates to program exclusively on punched cards. This was actually lucky, because the next class had to struggle mightily with a single VAX VMS system with so many users that the keyboard echo delay was up to 30 seconds. My work career was more recognizable, thank goodness.
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When I was about 13, 1992, one day I can't remember why but I bought a book like "teach yourself c++ in N days", the book ships with a floppy that includes a borland C++ ide, I follow the instruction line by line to install the ide, then copy line by line the sample source code, and had my first Hello World program compiled and run successfully. But honestly, I found myself can't actually understand what pointer is after reading the pointer chapters over and over for N times, so I gave up, in fact at that time, I don't even know what I was doing, what is compiling, what is linking, what is parsing, I have no idea, to me, I just write some code, then press a button, wow, I have a running program! Later I move to Visual Basic, I found that for people who first learn to program, having an immediate visual respond is really a big plus and encouragement to keep learning. I did keep learning Visual Basic for many years, from the very basic up to finding a need to call into Win32 api. After .NET was first introduced, I fall in love with C#, it is clean, easy to understand, and powerful, I love this language. When I feel that I can make a living by providing C# based solution, I started a company to do so. The business is still doing fine at this point.
Our high school didn't have computers. I had heard rumors about them but didn't really know what it was all about. I was good at math and physics in high school and didn't really know what I wanted to do so I started out in math and physics in college, thinking I might go into astronomy because I had been interested in it earlier. I stopped taking physics classes after I almost failed quantum mechanics because I just didn't get it and the astronomy classes they offered were boring. I decided to specialize in applied math. The Department of Electrical Engineering offered a FORTRAN class as an elective for applied math majors and I decided to try it out. A friend was taking COBOL and BASIC classes and it sounded interesting. It was one of those "aha" moments. As soon as I got into the class I knew this was what I wanted to do. It was too late to change my major but I took all the "computer science" classes they offered at the time. After college I got drafted and when I got out I went back to grad school for "computer engineering" but decided hardware design was not for me. I applied for a job with Control Data in the Detroit office since it was nearby. They sent my resume to Minneapolis and I got an offer to move here. I couldn't believe they would pay me $900 a month to do this. You don't get pointers unless you understand assembly language.
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When I was about 13, 1992, one day I can't remember why but I bought a book like "teach yourself c++ in N days", the book ships with a floppy that includes a borland C++ ide, I follow the instruction line by line to install the ide, then copy line by line the sample source code, and had my first Hello World program compiled and run successfully. But honestly, I found myself can't actually understand what pointer is after reading the pointer chapters over and over for N times, so I gave up, in fact at that time, I don't even know what I was doing, what is compiling, what is linking, what is parsing, I have no idea, to me, I just write some code, then press a button, wow, I have a running program! Later I move to Visual Basic, I found that for people who first learn to program, having an immediate visual respond is really a big plus and encouragement to keep learning. I did keep learning Visual Basic for many years, from the very basic up to finding a need to call into Win32 api. After .NET was first introduced, I fall in love with C#, it is clean, easy to understand, and powerful, I love this language. When I feel that I can make a living by providing C# based solution, I started a company to do so. The business is still doing fine at this point.
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.jpg wrote:
I fall in love with C#, it is clean, easy to understand, and powerful, I love this language.
I don't understand how anybody can "love" languages like C# (or VB or Java). Sure, it pays the bills, but it is boring and verbose. Of all languages I've worked with C# is the least joyful - I prefer even "ugly" languages like Perl and JavaScript.
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When I was about 13, 1992, one day I can't remember why but I bought a book like "teach yourself c++ in N days", the book ships with a floppy that includes a borland C++ ide, I follow the instruction line by line to install the ide, then copy line by line the sample source code, and had my first Hello World program compiled and run successfully. But honestly, I found myself can't actually understand what pointer is after reading the pointer chapters over and over for N times, so I gave up, in fact at that time, I don't even know what I was doing, what is compiling, what is linking, what is parsing, I have no idea, to me, I just write some code, then press a button, wow, I have a running program! Later I move to Visual Basic, I found that for people who first learn to program, having an immediate visual respond is really a big plus and encouragement to keep learning. I did keep learning Visual Basic for many years, from the very basic up to finding a need to call into Win32 api. After .NET was first introduced, I fall in love with C#, it is clean, easy to understand, and powerful, I love this language. When I feel that I can make a living by providing C# based solution, I started a company to do so. The business is still doing fine at this point.
I wrote my first program in Fortran IV and ran it on an IBM 360 back in 1969. This was part of the "numerical analysis" course(part of the EE curriculum). There was no O/S, just a compiler and loader that would eventually execute your program. Because this setup did not protect the rather rudimentary control program, my program crashed the system when I managed to write into the control program's memory. I was hooked at that point, but programming jobs were few and far between, basically requiring that you have ten years experience in technologies that were only a few years old. I never understood where they got their applicants. So after graduation I worked as an EE proficient in designing digital hardware (which is remarkable similar to programming in many ways). In 1984, the company I was working for was having money problems, so they told me that since the hardware design was complete, I could either leave or switch to programming. I've been a professional programmer ever since.
Fletcher Glenn
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Yeah, you either get pointers or you don't. There's no "in-between" there. Not a big deal though. At least on Windows platforms, a large majority of people write decent code without ever explicitly using pointers (or with minimal pointer usage).
Regards, Nish
Are you addicted to CP? If so, check this out: The Code Project Forum Analyzer : Find out how much of a life you don't have! My technology blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
"a large majority of people write decent code without ever explicitly using pointers (or with minimal pointer usage)" .. and those that understood pointers usually fixed their pointer-related bugs for them :) I never met a programmer who didn't get pointers yet could successfully use them, even minimally. Fortunately for everybody, there's now languages like C# out there that allow such folks to be productive without requiring a more competent programmer to follow them around cleaning up after them.
patbob
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When I was about 13, 1992, one day I can't remember why but I bought a book like "teach yourself c++ in N days", the book ships with a floppy that includes a borland C++ ide, I follow the instruction line by line to install the ide, then copy line by line the sample source code, and had my first Hello World program compiled and run successfully. But honestly, I found myself can't actually understand what pointer is after reading the pointer chapters over and over for N times, so I gave up, in fact at that time, I don't even know what I was doing, what is compiling, what is linking, what is parsing, I have no idea, to me, I just write some code, then press a button, wow, I have a running program! Later I move to Visual Basic, I found that for people who first learn to program, having an immediate visual respond is really a big plus and encouragement to keep learning. I did keep learning Visual Basic for many years, from the very basic up to finding a need to call into Win32 api. After .NET was first introduced, I fall in love with C#, it is clean, easy to understand, and powerful, I love this language. When I feel that I can make a living by providing C# based solution, I started a company to do so. The business is still doing fine at this point.
We are not professionals, by definition, only Dr's are, MD, PhD. I used to fiddle with code for fun, my dad bought an Atari 400 for the family. I fiddled with the Basic ROM cartridge that came with it. All throughout school it was mostly a spare time plaything, Basic on TRS-80 and Apple II, IIc, and IIe. It wasn't until I met a boss who saw my potential and assigned one of his programmers to talk to me and see if I have any interest in going into programming as a future. At that point I was doing a little bit of Ashton-Tate dBase and Clipper. They sent me to my first Pascal class and the rest is history. I guess that means I'm history... ;) I had a great teacher who focused on concept, he was like a Shaolin master or Pat Morita type. He hammered us with the concept of the language being irrelevant, it's the algorithms that count. I dabbled in a lot of languages, but I'm primarily C++. I love OOP combined with the power to create and destroy "new" and "delete" ooh, awesome. My first few C# programs were rejected by the compiler due to my obsessive cleanup habits from C++. It took me a while to be sloppy and let C# do a lot of the work. You should try BFP for fun. That language is like tying your hands up and bobbing for apples. It's fun and frustrating. Aloha...
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When I was about 13, 1992, one day I can't remember why but I bought a book like "teach yourself c++ in N days", the book ships with a floppy that includes a borland C++ ide, I follow the instruction line by line to install the ide, then copy line by line the sample source code, and had my first Hello World program compiled and run successfully. But honestly, I found myself can't actually understand what pointer is after reading the pointer chapters over and over for N times, so I gave up, in fact at that time, I don't even know what I was doing, what is compiling, what is linking, what is parsing, I have no idea, to me, I just write some code, then press a button, wow, I have a running program! Later I move to Visual Basic, I found that for people who first learn to program, having an immediate visual respond is really a big plus and encouragement to keep learning. I did keep learning Visual Basic for many years, from the very basic up to finding a need to call into Win32 api. After .NET was first introduced, I fall in love with C#, it is clean, easy to understand, and powerful, I love this language. When I feel that I can make a living by providing C# based solution, I started a company to do so. The business is still doing fine at this point.
You would probably have the same problem with pointers in C. To get a good hold on pointers, start with assembly language. There, you will learn about pointers and memory. You will learn to use a pointer to iterate through an array of items. This is how I started, before going on to Pascal, where pointers are far removed from the actual machine. You will really get the hang of pointers when you start playing with the stack pointer. And, when you really want to get fancy, you will understand how to manipulate the instruction pointer.
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We are not professionals, by definition, only Dr's are, MD, PhD. I used to fiddle with code for fun, my dad bought an Atari 400 for the family. I fiddled with the Basic ROM cartridge that came with it. All throughout school it was mostly a spare time plaything, Basic on TRS-80 and Apple II, IIc, and IIe. It wasn't until I met a boss who saw my potential and assigned one of his programmers to talk to me and see if I have any interest in going into programming as a future. At that point I was doing a little bit of Ashton-Tate dBase and Clipper. They sent me to my first Pascal class and the rest is history. I guess that means I'm history... ;) I had a great teacher who focused on concept, he was like a Shaolin master or Pat Morita type. He hammered us with the concept of the language being irrelevant, it's the algorithms that count. I dabbled in a lot of languages, but I'm primarily C++. I love OOP combined with the power to create and destroy "new" and "delete" ooh, awesome. My first few C# programs were rejected by the compiler due to my obsessive cleanup habits from C++. It took me a while to be sloppy and let C# do a lot of the work. You should try BFP for fun. That language is like tying your hands up and bobbing for apples. It's fun and frustrating. Aloha...
What do you mean we're not professionals? If we get paid for it, then we must be. Look at players in the NBA, NFL, PGA, or "professional" baseball leagues. They are paid for what they do (and they call that playing). I don't get paid as much as those super-stars, but I do get paid for my programming skills. Sometimes, it even feels like playing. Yeah, I think we are "professionals". Enjoy it.
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When I was about 13, 1992, one day I can't remember why but I bought a book like "teach yourself c++ in N days", the book ships with a floppy that includes a borland C++ ide, I follow the instruction line by line to install the ide, then copy line by line the sample source code, and had my first Hello World program compiled and run successfully. But honestly, I found myself can't actually understand what pointer is after reading the pointer chapters over and over for N times, so I gave up, in fact at that time, I don't even know what I was doing, what is compiling, what is linking, what is parsing, I have no idea, to me, I just write some code, then press a button, wow, I have a running program! Later I move to Visual Basic, I found that for people who first learn to program, having an immediate visual respond is really a big plus and encouragement to keep learning. I did keep learning Visual Basic for many years, from the very basic up to finding a need to call into Win32 api. After .NET was first introduced, I fall in love with C#, it is clean, easy to understand, and powerful, I love this language. When I feel that I can make a living by providing C# based solution, I started a company to do so. The business is still doing fine at this point.
I became a professional programmer by building a fence. I had just graduated as a Mechanical Engineer. Couldn't get a job in my field. My dad was a carpenter who had taken more work than he could handle. I was building a fence for a woman, whose cousin came for a visit. It impressed him I was an ME willing to get my hands dirty AND in my "spare" time at university took computer classes. (Nobody took computer classes seriously, because computers were rarely seen. Most companies couldn't afford to buy one.)
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We are not professionals, by definition, only Dr's are, MD, PhD. I used to fiddle with code for fun, my dad bought an Atari 400 for the family. I fiddled with the Basic ROM cartridge that came with it. All throughout school it was mostly a spare time plaything, Basic on TRS-80 and Apple II, IIc, and IIe. It wasn't until I met a boss who saw my potential and assigned one of his programmers to talk to me and see if I have any interest in going into programming as a future. At that point I was doing a little bit of Ashton-Tate dBase and Clipper. They sent me to my first Pascal class and the rest is history. I guess that means I'm history... ;) I had a great teacher who focused on concept, he was like a Shaolin master or Pat Morita type. He hammered us with the concept of the language being irrelevant, it's the algorithms that count. I dabbled in a lot of languages, but I'm primarily C++. I love OOP combined with the power to create and destroy "new" and "delete" ooh, awesome. My first few C# programs were rejected by the compiler due to my obsessive cleanup habits from C++. It took me a while to be sloppy and let C# do a lot of the work. You should try BFP for fun. That language is like tying your hands up and bobbing for apples. It's fun and frustrating. Aloha...
NuLiFree wrote:
We are not professionals, by definition, only Dr's are, MD, PhD.
Whose definition? From http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/professional[^]: 1. following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain: a professional builder. 2. of, pertaining to, or connected with a profession: professional studies. 3. appropriate to a profession: professional objectivity. 4. engaged in one of the learned professions: A lawyer is a professional person. 5. following as a business an occupation ordinarily engaged in as a pastime: a professional golfer. 6. making a business or constant practice of something not properly to be regarded as a business: “A salesman,” he said, “is a professional optimist.” 7. undertaken or engaged in as a means of livelihood or for gain: professional baseball. 8. of or for a professional person or his or her place of business or work: a professional apartment; professional equipment. 9. done by a professional; expert: professional car repairs. –noun 10. a person who belongs to one of the professions, especially one of the learned professions. 11. a person who earns a living in a sport or other occupation frequently engaged in by amateurs: a golf professional. 12. an expert player, as of golf or tennis, serving as a teacher, consultant, performer, or contestant; pro. 13. a person who is expert at his or her work: You can tell by her comments that this editor is a real professional. I don't see "Dr" directly referenced in any of the above. Of course, "whore" isn't listed above, but I've heard over and over that's the oldest profession.
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Naaaa, it's always good to know the "nuts and bolts" of what's going on. My first computer course was in '77. I was a junior in high school and we wrote our programs in Fortran, created the punch cards in class, then took them to city hall to run them on the city's mainframe. I flunked my first college computer class, I wasn't intrested in using the punch cards and Fortran to do DB programs, I was more interested in the mini-mainframes in the main computer room that I could write GRAPHICS programs for (and save on... wait for it... punch TAPE!) I took a computer architecture class (when I finally went back to college) in '85 and an assembly course (used an 8088). I think those were the best courses for understanding what the computer is really doing each time you make a call or store something in memory. Makes me really appreciate the programming advancements... though you can't beat assembly for shear speed! I got into programming by accident. Started out drafting, earned a Materials Engineering degree, taught myself AutoCad (on DOS). I started writing lisp to do the grunt work for me, then parametric programs connecting to an Oracle DB I set up on an AS400 (the company financials server), then Quick Basic w/ Assembly. From there I took a job as a "real" programmer. :-D
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We are not professionals, by definition, only Dr's are, MD, PhD. I used to fiddle with code for fun, my dad bought an Atari 400 for the family. I fiddled with the Basic ROM cartridge that came with it. All throughout school it was mostly a spare time plaything, Basic on TRS-80 and Apple II, IIc, and IIe. It wasn't until I met a boss who saw my potential and assigned one of his programmers to talk to me and see if I have any interest in going into programming as a future. At that point I was doing a little bit of Ashton-Tate dBase and Clipper. They sent me to my first Pascal class and the rest is history. I guess that means I'm history... ;) I had a great teacher who focused on concept, he was like a Shaolin master or Pat Morita type. He hammered us with the concept of the language being irrelevant, it's the algorithms that count. I dabbled in a lot of languages, but I'm primarily C++. I love OOP combined with the power to create and destroy "new" and "delete" ooh, awesome. My first few C# programs were rejected by the compiler due to my obsessive cleanup habits from C++. It took me a while to be sloppy and let C# do a lot of the work. You should try BFP for fun. That language is like tying your hands up and bobbing for apples. It's fun and frustrating. Aloha...
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But, will anything still read them?
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In 1960 as a young conscript the Israeli army decided that I am suitable and I started programming in assembly language for the Philco 2000 (AKA Transac 212). I went on to Fortran, COBOL, VB, C, Java and C#. Still at it.
Wow, 51 years is about the longest career you can have in this business. Congrats just surviving that long
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I started back in 73 (I was 14) on an ASR-33 connected to an HP-2000 via accoustic coupler. I learned pointers while taking an Assembly class at Control Data Institute. I had over-written my Base Pointer for my project. Once the instructor explained what I had done, I had a much better idea of what they were and how they were used. Needless to say, these days, many programmers don't understand them (and don't have to with the tools available today). The nuts and bolts of my assembly days are no longer necessary learning. I guess I'm old.
brdmcdowell wrote: accoustic coupler Oh yeah... up to 300 bps IIRC
