Skip to content
  • Categories
  • Recent
  • Tags
  • Popular
  • World
  • Users
  • Groups
Skins
  • Light
  • Cerulean
  • Cosmo
  • Flatly
  • Journal
  • Litera
  • Lumen
  • Lux
  • Materia
  • Minty
  • Morph
  • Pulse
  • Sandstone
  • Simplex
  • Sketchy
  • Spacelab
  • United
  • Yeti
  • Zephyr
  • Dark
  • Cyborg
  • Darkly
  • Quartz
  • Slate
  • Solar
  • Superhero
  • Vapor

  • Default (No Skin)
  • No Skin
Collapse
Code Project
  1. Home
  2. The Lounge
  3. What made you start coding?

What made you start coding?

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved The Lounge
question
127 Posts 44 Posters 24 Views 1 Watching
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as topic
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
  • H honey the codewitch

    you need something that takes composite i believe?

    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.

    D Offline
    D Offline
    dandy72
    wrote on last edited by
    #77

    If only. I have no spare TV, and all my spare monitors are VGA only.

    H 1 Reply Last reply
    0
    • G Gary Wheeler

      Let me put it this way. We print fast enough (up to 17 feet of paper per second) that you could play DOOM at around 50 fps on the printed paper.

      Software Zen: delete this;

      H Offline
      H Offline
      honey the codewitch
      wrote on last edited by
      #78

      haha until you run out of ink

      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.

      G 1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • D dandy72

        If only. I have no spare TV, and all my spare monitors are VGA only.

        H Offline
        H Offline
        honey the codewitch
        wrote on last edited by
        #79

        Amazon.com: High Resolution TV to PC Composite RCA/S-Video to VGA Video Converter Box HD Video and Audio Adapter Converter Wide Screen for DVD DVR VCR Monitor: Gateway[^] This should get you what you want $20

        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.

        D 1 Reply Last reply
        0
        • H honey the codewitch

          haha until you run out of ink

          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.

          G Offline
          G Offline
          Gary Wheeler
          wrote on last edited by
          #80

          Our standard ink supply is a 208 liter barrel of each color: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Some customers use bulk totes that hold close to 1000 liters. You're more likely to run out of paper. We can go through a 40,000 foot roll in less than an hour.

          Software Zen: delete this;

          1 Reply Last reply
          0
          • H honey the codewitch

            Amazon.com: High Resolution TV to PC Composite RCA/S-Video to VGA Video Converter Box HD Video and Audio Adapter Converter Wide Screen for DVD DVR VCR Monitor: Gateway[^] This should get you what you want $20

            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.

            D Offline
            D Offline
            dandy72
            wrote on last edited by
            #81

            I have one of those, or at least a more sophisticated/expensive version of it that includes audio (this converter from Amazon would be video only, would it not?). Mine's either no longer working, or there's something wrong with the conversion somewhere along the way, because it wouldn't show anything. I'll admit I haven't fully investigated all my options yet...

            H 1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • D dandy72

              I have one of those, or at least a more sophisticated/expensive version of it that includes audio (this converter from Amazon would be video only, would it not?). Mine's either no longer working, or there's something wrong with the conversion somewhere along the way, because it wouldn't show anything. I'll admit I haven't fully investigated all my options yet...

              H Offline
              H Offline
              honey the codewitch
              wrote on last edited by
              #82

              i think this one claimed to have audio, and amazon takes returns. it might be worth a shot.

              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.

              D 1 Reply Last reply
              0
              • H honey the codewitch

                i think this one claimed to have audio, and amazon takes returns. it might be worth a shot.

                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.

                D Offline
                D Offline
                dandy72
                wrote on last edited by
                #83

                Not seeing any link in your message, or did you mean the one you had already previously linked to? If you meant the item at your previous link...then clearly, it's only got RCA and S-Video for input, and VGA for output. None of which handle any sort of audio. Unless all the pictures are wrong.

                H 1 Reply Last reply
                0
                • D dandy72

                  Not seeing any link in your message, or did you mean the one you had already previously linked to? If you meant the item at your previous link...then clearly, it's only got RCA and S-Video for input, and VGA for output. None of which handle any sort of audio. Unless all the pictures are wrong.

                  H Offline
                  H Offline
                  honey the codewitch
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #84

                  the description said something about sound, but TBH i just skimmed it. was assuming there was an 8th inch stereo output jack on it somewhere. *shrug*

                  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.

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                    Not really sure - it was many, many years ago. I just kinda woke up one morning thinking "religion is b*ll*cks and I wanna program computers". So I became an atheist* and my future was laid out. Never even seen a computer except on TV up to then, and had no idea whatsoever what it actually involved. If I'd had a dream about Spaghetti Junction maybe I'd have been a road planner instead, who can say? * I grew out of that when I realised atheism is a form of extremism, (fanaticism, call it what you will), just like being a god botherer is.

                    Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640 Never throw anything away, Griff Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

                    D Offline
                    D Offline
                    David ONeil
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #85

                    OriginalGriff wrote:

                    I grew out of that when I realised atheism is a form of extremism...

                    It would be nice if more people made that connection. Sometimes I think they hate for hating's sake. Just as some religious people do (ie, their views of Muslims).

                    The forgotten roots of science | C++ Programming | DWinLib

                    1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • H honey the codewitch

                      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.

                      M Offline
                      M Offline
                      Mycroft Holmes
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #86

                      I'm lazy and I saw a way to automate the onerous parts of my sales job, generating quotes. My sales manager sacked me because I was sitting around playing with excel macros instead of out selling (and yet I still met budget). I went to my biggest client and offered to convert lotus 123 macros to excel 1 (which I had sold them) and never looked back.

                      Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP

                      1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • H honey the codewitch

                        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.

                        D Offline
                        D Offline
                        DJ van Wyk
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #87

                        In the good old day before the internet shipped on convenient CD's (South Africa got mainstream internet way later than 1st world countries) we played all the games we could get our hands on. Once we finished them all the only thing to do was to write our own games. I was still in primary school at the time. First year was QBASIC, but luckily 9 years of Turbo Pascal followed. I coded graphics for more than 5 years before I wrote my first "Hello World" console app.

                        My plan is to live forever ... so far so good

                        H 1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • D DJ van Wyk

                          In the good old day before the internet shipped on convenient CD's (South Africa got mainstream internet way later than 1st world countries) we played all the games we could get our hands on. Once we finished them all the only thing to do was to write our own games. I was still in primary school at the time. First year was QBASIC, but luckily 9 years of Turbo Pascal followed. I coded graphics for more than 5 years before I wrote my first "Hello World" console app.

                          My plan is to live forever ... so far so good

                          H Offline
                          H Offline
                          honey the codewitch
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #88

                          haha I loved QuickBASIC (the compilable version of qbasic" way back when. +1

                          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.

                          1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • H honey the codewitch

                            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.

                            B Offline
                            B Offline
                            Bajaja
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #89

                            'puzzle solving' and curiosity how to achieve something (align objects on screen, draw colors, calculate results of expressions...).

                            H 1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • B Bajaja

                              'puzzle solving' and curiosity how to achieve something (align objects on screen, draw colors, calculate results of expressions...).

                              H Offline
                              H Offline
                              honey the codewitch
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #90

                              you sound like a fellow tinkerer. =)

                              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.

                              B 1 Reply Last reply
                              0
                              • H honey the codewitch

                                you sound like a fellow tinkerer. =)

                                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.

                                B Offline
                                B Offline
                                Bajaja
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #91

                                naaah, just pretending :-D

                                H 1 Reply Last reply
                                0
                                • H honey the codewitch

                                  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.

                                  R Offline
                                  R Offline
                                  Roger Wright
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #92

                                  Before I started college, I knew I was going to have to learn programming as part of a BSEEE degree education. I found a book at the local library on FORTRAN II, and I think I memorized it. As a result, I aced my one programming class. My interest was in the analog and RF stuff that took math and physics knowledge that the digital kids couldn't fathom, so never followed up with it. But in my second year, I got a job at another, private, University, and they had a project that had been abandoned as hopeless by the previous lab tech. It was an Altair 8800, mostly assembled then ripped apart in frustration by my predecessor. He took the documentation with him when he left. I completely disassembled it, phoned MITS to get a new schematic, and rebuilt it correctly. It still didn't work, and I figured that it was a memory card issue - 4 cards x 1k. I found the manufacturer of the cards ($400 each back then) and after talking with their tech support, applied the recommended repair procedure - hook up the power supply tabs on the card edge connector to a variable supply, set the voltage, then increase the current limiter until something smokes. That worked, removing a solder bridge from a couple of the cards. Then came the problem of using the thing. There was no such thing as an application, nor an operating system, but there was a monitor - PL/1 I think it was - and the school was too cheap to pay for it. Fortunately, we had an ASR33 Teletype on hand, so I designed and built a S-100 card to allow the Altair to connect to the ASR33. Then, with the help of excellent documentation published by Intel, I wrote a monitor program to listen for activity on the terminal port. Once that was working, having to enter it each time in binary using the front panel switches on the Altair, I got it to send the memory dump to the paper tape punch on the ASR33. That took several tries, owing to power glitches that reset everything. But once I got that done, I could enter a mere 16 bytes of code from the front panel to make a bootstrap loader, install the tape in the reader, and toggle RUN on the front panel. From there, the powers that were told me that their students couldn't be expected to program in Intel opcodes, so I had to make another, rather long, paper tape. Still using the native machine code, I created an Assembler, which allowed students to write (and type) programs using the customary assembly language pseudo-English notation, rather than all ones and zeroes. Having done all that to make a collection of circuits

                                  H 1 Reply Last reply
                                  0
                                  • H honey the codewitch

                                    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.

                                    M Offline
                                    M Offline
                                    Member 9167057
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #93

                                    I started coding pretty much for the fun of it. I've been spending a huge heaps of time on computers for the sake of it and for the sake of fascination of tech. Coding was the next logical step.

                                    H 1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • M Member 9167057

                                      I started coding pretty much for the fun of it. I've been spending a huge heaps of time on computers for the sake of it and for the sake of fascination of tech. Coding was the next logical step.

                                      H Offline
                                      H Offline
                                      honey the codewitch
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #94

                                      makes sense. although experience has taught me that when it comes to code, logic is overrated. At least 1/3 of it is voodoo. :-D

                                      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.

                                      1 Reply Last reply
                                      0
                                      • R Roger Wright

                                        Before I started college, I knew I was going to have to learn programming as part of a BSEEE degree education. I found a book at the local library on FORTRAN II, and I think I memorized it. As a result, I aced my one programming class. My interest was in the analog and RF stuff that took math and physics knowledge that the digital kids couldn't fathom, so never followed up with it. But in my second year, I got a job at another, private, University, and they had a project that had been abandoned as hopeless by the previous lab tech. It was an Altair 8800, mostly assembled then ripped apart in frustration by my predecessor. He took the documentation with him when he left. I completely disassembled it, phoned MITS to get a new schematic, and rebuilt it correctly. It still didn't work, and I figured that it was a memory card issue - 4 cards x 1k. I found the manufacturer of the cards ($400 each back then) and after talking with their tech support, applied the recommended repair procedure - hook up the power supply tabs on the card edge connector to a variable supply, set the voltage, then increase the current limiter until something smokes. That worked, removing a solder bridge from a couple of the cards. Then came the problem of using the thing. There was no such thing as an application, nor an operating system, but there was a monitor - PL/1 I think it was - and the school was too cheap to pay for it. Fortunately, we had an ASR33 Teletype on hand, so I designed and built a S-100 card to allow the Altair to connect to the ASR33. Then, with the help of excellent documentation published by Intel, I wrote a monitor program to listen for activity on the terminal port. Once that was working, having to enter it each time in binary using the front panel switches on the Altair, I got it to send the memory dump to the paper tape punch on the ASR33. That took several tries, owing to power glitches that reset everything. But once I got that done, I could enter a mere 16 bytes of code from the front panel to make a bootstrap loader, install the tape in the reader, and toggle RUN on the front panel. From there, the powers that were told me that their students couldn't be expected to program in Intel opcodes, so I had to make another, rather long, paper tape. Still using the native machine code, I created an Assembler, which allowed students to write (and type) programs using the customary assembly language pseudo-English notation, rather than all ones and zeroes. Having done all that to make a collection of circuits

                                        H Offline
                                        H Offline
                                        honey the codewitch
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #95

                                        so you're an engineer that codes. cool. =) we could use more. thank goodness we developers don't build bridges and skyscrapers is all I'm sayin' :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.

                                        1 Reply Last reply
                                        0
                                        • B Bajaja

                                          naaah, just pretending :-D

                                          H Offline
                                          H Offline
                                          honey the codewitch
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #96

                                          me too.

                                          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.

                                          1 Reply Last reply
                                          0
                                          Reply
                                          • Reply as topic
                                          Log in to reply
                                          • Oldest to Newest
                                          • Newest to Oldest
                                          • Most Votes


                                          • Login

                                          • Don't have an account? Register

                                          • Login or register to search.
                                          • First post
                                            Last post
                                          0
                                          • Categories
                                          • Recent
                                          • Tags
                                          • Popular
                                          • World
                                          • Users
                                          • Groups