What made you start coding?
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Schoolbus? How boring :-) The Elf's CDP1802 was the first processor to fly into space. It was even believed that it was aboard the Viking and Voyager probes, but that's probably not true. That would be great when Voyager Six returns.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
the exciting part isn't so much the tech, but what can be done with it.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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i was 8 when reagan was in office. I liked to read while eating breakfast. If not for that I may have never picked up that Applesoft BASIC manual that shipped with our craptastic Apple ][gs By the next year i was wiring stuff into the joystick port on the motherboard. 10 years later i was at microsoft.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
When I was about 10, my father gave an AP course in FORTRAN for high-school students at the local University. He took me along a couple of times, and I was hooked. This was about the year 6 BT (Before Terminals). God only knows how many punched cards I ruined before I got a program that would compile. :-O
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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When I was about 10, my father gave an AP course in FORTRAN for high-school students at the local University. He took me along a couple of times, and I was hooked. This was about the year 6 BT (Before Terminals). God only knows how many punched cards I ruined before I got a program that would compile. :-O
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
6 BT :laugh: :thumbsup::thumbsup:
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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You're not young, 40 is like ancient :laugh: And with 31 (almost 32) I'm not that young myself anymore :sigh: WoW came out when I was still in high school. I'd say I'm a little too young to have played Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, but I have played Age of Empires which was released only two years later :laugh: I've played Warcraft III though.
Best, Sander sanderrossel.com Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
Beware! I AM young... still...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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I... I don't... know... out of... words... :wtf: Luckily I'm not out of pitchforks though! X| Actual footage of me coming to your house[^] :D
Best, Sander sanderrossel.com Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
well you'll be happy to know that due to my aversion to this:
} } }}
}I've been using Refactor->Extract Method what a wonderful feature.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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i was 8 when reagan was in office. I liked to read while eating breakfast. If not for that I may have never picked up that Applesoft BASIC manual that shipped with our craptastic Apple ][gs By the next year i was wiring stuff into the joystick port on the motherboard. 10 years later i was at microsoft.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
Was gainfully employed as a chemist and was exploring a new Inductively Coupled Argon Plasma Spectrometer we had just bought. Could not find any analysis tools for the PDP-11 running the dang thing, so I learned PDP-11 assembly and wrote my own. Then did the same for a Gas Chromatograph we were using for oilfield gas analysis.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, navigate a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects! - Lazarus Long
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Was gainfully employed as a chemist and was exploring a new Inductively Coupled Argon Plasma Spectrometer we had just bought. Could not find any analysis tools for the PDP-11 running the dang thing, so I learned PDP-11 assembly and wrote my own. Then did the same for a Gas Chromatograph we were using for oilfield gas analysis.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, navigate a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects! - Lazarus Long
what a way to get started. into the fire as it were. I almost bought a crusty old PDP-11 but i didn't know where i'd keep it. These days, i could probably emulate one on a phone. :laugh:
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Well when I heard of it I was thinking a microcontroller could get rid of the discrete logic (and the joys of static/dynamic hazards due to propagation delay) but wasn't too sure if you wanted to go that route...
The biggest problem at the moment is to find a PIC32 that still runs at 5V. I could run the CDP1802 at 3.6V, but then I would have to lower its clock frequency. I have had an underclocked 1802 for 40 years, now I want to overclock[^] it. I intend a smaller PIC to conrol the 1802's clock frequency and operating mode. It also must communicate with a small serial ROM and copy it's contents into memory after a reset. This way I can keep the ROM out of the Elf's memory map and still have something to boot from. With a PIC in control of the clock frequency, I can do almost everything, from single stepping instructions to full blast or overclocking.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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i was 8 when reagan was in office. I liked to read while eating breakfast. If not for that I may have never picked up that Applesoft BASIC manual that shipped with our craptastic Apple ][gs By the next year i was wiring stuff into the joystick port on the motherboard. 10 years later i was at microsoft.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
I sucked rocks as an elementary school teacher. Was married and needed a new career. Luckily, programming and I were a good fit.
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what a way to get started. into the fire as it were. I almost bought a crusty old PDP-11 but i didn't know where i'd keep it. These days, i could probably emulate one on a phone. :laugh:
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
Quote:
what a way to get started. into the fire as it were.
Yep. Bear in mind that the argon plasma was created by passing argon gas through a coil of water cooled copper tubing energized by a 5KW RF generator. Never set anything on fire, but the generator frequency was very close to the middle of the CB Radio bands. If we ever forgot to close the faraday cage, we blew up every CB radio in town.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, navigate a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects! - Lazarus Long
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i was 8 when reagan was in office. I liked to read while eating breakfast. If not for that I may have never picked up that Applesoft BASIC manual that shipped with our craptastic Apple ][gs By the next year i was wiring stuff into the joystick port on the motherboard. 10 years later i was at microsoft.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
I got to do some C programming in my first calculus class in college and found out that I enjoyed it. I picked up more programming skills on my own then decided to take some programming classes. Fun times :-D
Just because the code works, it doesn't mean that it is good code.
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Failed my last year of University* because I had been playing World of Warcraft too much. I still lived at home and my parents weren't pleased. They just sold their IT company to an uncle, an employee and a third that wasn't with the company until he bought it. My mom said "you're going to find a job or I'll do it for you, you can start there!" And I said "but I don't even know how to write code!" And then she gently whispered "THEN YOU'LL FUCKING LEARN! :mad::mad::mad:" And so I was hired because I was the son of old management and the nephew of new management and also because I had some affinity with computers, being a gamer and all. No one in this story regretted that decision. I liked programming and I learned it very quickly. I learned a lot, wrote some great software, introduced some new technology to the company, made them a lot of money (earned some myself as well), and then I moved on after four years :D Another five or so years later and here I am :D *I still finished that last year of University, earning me the title Master of Arts :D
Best, Sander sanderrossel.com Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
I was fortunate enough to convince my parents to get me a ZX Spectrum as a Christmas present in 84, when I was 13. In those days, you could buy magazines that contained BASIC print outs for games. I learnt to debug before learnt to program. You'd type in a program, run it and get some weird result - and have to try to figure out where I'd miskeyed something. I started being able to see how the bug could manifest itself given the code I'd entered - something I believe I'm better at than most programmers. From there it was a matter of modifying the programs, and mashing bits of them together into new ones.
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The biggest problem at the moment is to find a PIC32 that still runs at 5V. I could run the CDP1802 at 3.6V, but then I would have to lower its clock frequency. I have had an underclocked 1802 for 40 years, now I want to overclock[^] it. I intend a smaller PIC to conrol the 1802's clock frequency and operating mode. It also must communicate with a small serial ROM and copy it's contents into memory after a reset. This way I can keep the ROM out of the Elf's memory map and still have something to boot from. With a PIC in control of the clock frequency, I can do almost everything, from single stepping instructions to full blast or overclocking.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
Silly I know, but what about a potenial divider 5V to 3.6V, Vo = Vi *((R2)/(R1+R2)), Vo = 5*(3.3K /(3.3K+ 1.7)), Vo = 3.3v, I always go for slightly below max. There are some good level shifting IC's (Texas Instruments)...
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i was 8 when reagan was in office. I liked to read while eating breakfast. If not for that I may have never picked up that Applesoft BASIC manual that shipped with our craptastic Apple ][gs By the next year i was wiring stuff into the joystick port on the motherboard. 10 years later i was at microsoft.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
Ah, 'twas the year 1983, and I decided to find out what all the hoo-rah was about. I had seen a classmate's BASIC code a few year's earlier and the idea that a few arcane incantations could actually tell a machine to do something interesting was totally baffling. But, once I was introduced to it and tried it, I found that I could do it like nobody's business. (BASIC-Plus on a PDP-11 running RSTS-E) Money for nothing, and the chicks for free.
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ooooh, i bet that getting that was like 3 christmas' worth of joy.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
honey the codewitch wrote:
ooooh, i bet that getting that was like 3 christmas' worth of joy.
Mine was, quite literally, spread over 3 Christmases. I got my C64 (and tape drive) on Xmas 83 (84?)...I put up with the tape drive for a year. Then the next Xmas I got the floppy drive, and the one after that a printer. I never did get a "proper" monitor so everything was hooked up to a TV on channel 3. I'm sure that did nothing good for my eyesight. As for the thread's main question...I started coding because there wasn't much I could do with the computer other than play what few games I had the first year on cartridge. Since most games came on floppy, that wasn't an option for me so I started reading the programming manual, and saving stuff to cassette. The floppy drive was a godsend. After that I was old enough to get a job and spend my own money on my own toys, so I got a 64C (really the same thing, but in a gray/white package), and my folks sold the original 64 to a couple of friends of theirs who had a kid a few years younger than I was...then I got a 128...I honestly have *no clue* what happened to those computers and sometimes wished I still had them. Then I moved on to the PC world. Nostalgia got the better of me, and got a 64 Mini last year (thanks to Nintendo for starting that trend). Then the nostalgia only got worse :-) and a few months ago I purchased a 64C + floppy drive (the "real thing") off of Kijiji, a Canadian equivalent to eBay. I temporarily hooked it up to a TV via the antenna connector, just to confirm it works, but I don't have the room to leave it there permanently. I have the room (and monitor) to set up elsewhere, but need *some* sort of adapter to hook it up via VGA.
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Silly I know, but what about a potenial divider 5V to 3.6V, Vo = Vi *((R2)/(R1+R2)), Vo = 5*(3.3K /(3.3K+ 1.7)), Vo = 3.3v, I always go for slightly below max. There are some good level shifting IC's (Texas Instruments)...
It's usually done that way, but it's the data bus that I must hook up to the PIC. I need something like a dual level bus transciever. Edit: I found this one[^], but I would need eight of them. The rest of the signals are inputs for the PIC and it's 5V tolerant. Edit 2: Here we go[^]
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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42 is when they let you in on the Big Secret(TM)
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Coding was something my father could not understand, so he couldn't "take over", as it were. Plus the computer room in 7th grade was a great place to hide from the bullies.
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After my first exposure to "software" (in the 70's), I decided I could do it better. Over 40 years later, that has not changed.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013#realJSOP wrote:
After my first exposure to "software" (in the 70's), I decided I could do it better. Over 40 years later, that has not changed.
Over 40 years later, you look at your own code and decide you could still do it better. It's a no-win situation. :-) (ok, it doesn't take 40 years to get to that stage...)
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honey the codewitch wrote:
42 is when they let you in on the Big Secret(TM)
What? WHAT DID I MISS?
apparently life, the universe and everything? sorry dandy
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
