Who on here programs?

[Katty]

... computers that is?

What kind of programming do you do?

What language(s) do you work in?

 

 

As for me, my chief interest is web development, although I'm also interested in apps.

I'm primarily working in that crazy language known as JavaScript, but I'm also learning c/c++ so that I don't get to thinking that JavaScript is normal XD.

I know some Java/JavaFX, but it's so bloated. In the future, I'd also like to learn lisp/clojure.

 

 

[trottigy]

I used to program in C & later C++ , but that was a long time ago.

 

Now it seems all about the apps for mobile devices. But that I haven't gotten into, but I'd like to. 

[Dages]

I know some Python but just for fun.

[jwhess]

I can't help but smile at Br. Jerry's comment "but that was a long time ago".  Back in the 1980's, I used to program in machine code, DOS batch file assembly, Basic and later just began Visual Basic and then quit the whole idea by the late 1990's.  "but that was a long time ago"....😉

[Sylv]

My husband is a programmer/developer/systems architect/whatever the company decides to call him this week (no kidding, he had to check his signature block a few weeks ago to see what his title was...)

 

I have taken a few programming courses, just to get an inkling of what he does (Basic, Virtual Basic, C, C++), but I don't enjoy it, and have forgotten everything except the importance of semi-colons  

[Katty]

5 hours ago, Sylv said:

My husband is a programmer/developer/systems architect/whatever the company decides to call him this week (no kidding, he had to check his signature block a few weeks ago to see what his title was...)

 

I have taken a few programming courses, just to get an inkling of what he does (Basic, Virtual Basic, C, C++), but I don't enjoy it, and have forgotten everything except the importance of semi-colons  

I find this to be rather sweet, taking an interest in what your husband does 

Yeah I think I read roughly 10% give or take of developers are women; feminists blame sexism, but the reality is that it doesn't tend to appeal to most women.

To be fair, it doesn't appeal to a lot of men either XD

 

[Sylv]

14 minutes ago, Katty said:

I find this to be rather sweet, taking an interest in what your husband does 

 

He has not, as yet, read through the Canadian Trade-marks Act  (disclaimer: I haven't read it, I just reference it).

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

I used to. I'm the old days. Early 70's I was doing what was then called the 'Radio Trades TV Technician' when digital side started to open. I switched over to 'Microprocessor Applications' where we did machine code on the Motorola 6800. I also did machine code for the Zilog Z-80.

CP/M was the 8 bit operating system by Digital Research and BASIC was popular.

The IBM PC didn't hit Australia till early 80's. There were 3 choices of OS: CP/M86 or PC Dos or UCSD-P System.

You then had to install your I/O interfaces (now called drivers) to match your keyboard, screen and printer to the box. Then you would set up the codes for bold, underline, italics etc, if you had a fancy printer.

Digital Reasearch pitched it's DR-DOS against Microsoft, who took the OS back from IBM, and starting pushing Dos 3.0. IBM invented its own OS called OS-2.

Basic was looked down on, so I learnt Pascal. That was supposed to be the next big thing. Visual Basic grew. Pascal died.

What I remember most is the changeable nature of the industry. I spent a lot of time learning all the current and upcoming info, went to the US trade shows, did product launches on Jumbo Jets (Data General DG-1) and was riding the crest of the PC boom. Yet almost all of those companies and products all fell away.

I walked away from the industry mid-80's and didn't touch any technology for years.

Even IBM left the PC market, selling to Lenovo. (The PC Junior never even made it Down-under, even though IBM built a PC factory over here.)

Sorry for the long winded answer to your question...

Yes, but no. All my languages are dead. And it has been so long that I would struggle to come up with some clean code.

The best bit of code I used was a full Accounts package that was loaded with the magnetic strip on a credit card. You would start the PC, then swipe the card, and you were good to go.

4k ram. 2x 8inch floppies for data storage. NEC PC.

Microsoft had a game called Decathlon. All ran from a 160 kb floppy on 4k ram.... Wow.

A watch has more power nowadays!

 

Older

{still waiting for the 'Wiser'}

 

 

 

 

[Vinnie]

As much as I love all things tech related, sadly, I have too many  memory  leaks and corrupt memory locations to make a go of it. There are so many free resources on the web.  How far along are you in programming? beginner, intermediate, advanced?  Not sure if this helps, but its worth a looksee.  Resources for programmers. https://www.thefreecountry.com/  Or if your curiosity pokes  n peeks you. (such an old joke)  http://www.tutorialspoint.com/assembly_programming/assembly_basic_syntax.htm 

 

If I understand correctly and  your someday interested in pcb as in ( printed circuit boards) invest in a decent sized breadboard.  Here is a company where you can get pretty much any  components. www.digikey.com 

[Qapla]

I first learned to program in the old FORTRAN IV language and run on the IBM 360 mainframe computer. Of course, the program had to be typed on punch cards and read into the machine with a card reader. Only things was, you would not know until after the program was "run" if there was an error. Then, you had to re-type the cards with the errors and try again. You could only do this a few times since, after a few runs, the cards became "damaged" and you ended up having to re-type the entire program.

 

Keep in mind, the punch card keyboard was not something you had at home so you had to go to where the mainframe computer or computer center was to type your cards.

 

Also, since mainframe computers took entire rooms to hold them, only places like Universities had them - and, you had to submit your program to the operator to be run when they had time to run it. So, it could take all week to successfully write a fairly simple program and have it run without errors.

 

In the early 70's I learned BASIC (now referred to as "structured Basic because it used line numbers). I ended up doing some "side" computer work where I re-wrote a program for a business acquaintance because the person who wrote the program kept telling him it couldn't do what he wanted done. He kept reminding him that, since his computer only had 64K memory, it was not powerful enough to do these things.

 

When I got done, the program did all those things it couldn't do even though he was still using the 64K Tandy Model II.

 

Later, I did venture into learning Visual Basic (I have an interesting/sad story about this I may share at a later date) and wrote a few programs. We used on of those at our KH for several years for playing the music at the meetings back when we used to play them from the CD's - first, when they were .wav file and later when they were .mp3 files)

 

I started to learn C, C+ and C++ but did not continue with it.

 

As a side point. One Brother we had was a regular pioneer and worked full time as a C++ programmer. He actually did "trouble shooting" for the company he worked for ny finding the errors other had in their code and fixing it. He continued to do this while attending the School for Married Couples (just prior to the SKE) and while serving as a substitute CO. They let him work remotely so he did his work in the middle of the night.

 

He finally gave it up when he was appoint as a full time CO.

 

I also had learned to write HTML in the early days of the WEB - I wrote my code using "Notepad" before they had visual web page creators.

 

[Katty]

1 hour ago, Vinnie said:

As much as I love all things tech related, sadly, I have too many  memory  leaks and corrupt memory locations to make a go of it. There are so many free resources on the web.  How far along are you in programming? beginner, intermediate, advanced?  Not sure if this helps, but its worth a looksee.  Resources for programmers. https://www.thefreecountry.com/  Or if your curiosity pokes  n peeks you. (such an old joke)  http://www.tutorialspoint.com/assembly_programming/assembly_basic_syntax.htm 

 

If I understand correctly and  your someday interested in pcb as in ( printed circuit boards) invest in a decent sized breadboard.  Here is a company where you can get pretty much any  components. www.digikey.com 

I wouldn't call myself advanced but I'm starting to do more advanced things in js, as in making programs without the built in functions. It's been pretty interesting

[jwhess]

48 minutes ago, Qapla said:

I first learned to program in the old FORTRAN IV language and run on the IBM 360 mainframe computer.

When I got done, the program did all those things it couldn't do even though he was still using the 64K Tandy Model II.

Br. John, I had an old IBM that ran APL (or AP/L). I don't remember if it was a 360, though.  It was white and about the size of family washing machine and had a connecting cable with a 'bizillion' wires in it to go to the terminal unit with keyboard. My youngest brother was (or is) a Fortran programmer.  He programmed satellite orbits for NASA communications.  He programmed at home on a Comodore 64.  I do not know what he used at work in the NASA Research division in Cleveland.  He is quite a mathematician.  I compiled code for the Comodore VIC-20 with 4 K of RAM and no storage (just used a cassette tape recorder with an audio plug).  Dem was da days....

 

EDIT:  I remember a sign in our computer department that said, "A COBOL programmer is a terrible thing to waste."

Edited July 12, 2018 by jwhess

[Qapla]

@jwhess It was in 1967 when I was learning FORTRAN IV - the IBM 360 we used was housed in a large room and resided at the University.

 

I did attempt to learn how to write apps for Android a while back.

 

I could not get the PC Emulator to work right - so, I gave up.

[Katty]

When someone says "old Fortran"

What I picture

 

[hatcheckgirl]

8 hours ago, TonyWenz said:

Yes, but no. All my languages are dead. And it has been so long that I would struggle to come up with some clean code.

Me too.  I studied programming after I left High School, thinking it would be a good fit for pioneering.  So I skipped Uni and did a TAFE course and learned BASIC and COBOL.  I finished that in a year instead of 4 years at Uni.  My first job was at IBM, where I learned assembler and was a service rep for DOS, including Series/1, and VM.  Back then, as was already mentioned, the machines were mainframes, the disk drives were housed in aircond rooms, and the tape decks were used to ship our code fixes (we call them updates now).  But then, I decided to pioneer, and IBM did not have part-time work (career jobs do not do part time).  They invented a part-time position for me as the technical librarian, and so I pioneered until I married and babies came along.  Around this time the PCs came in, and I never went back to programming or anything techie.

[hatcheckgirl]

7 hours ago, Qapla said:

Of course, the program had to be typed on punch cards and read into the machine with a card reader. Only things was, you would not know until after the program was "run" if there was an error. Then, you had to re-type the cards with the errors and try again.

Oh yes, I remember learning to code using punch cards on a PDP/11.  I was pretty hopeless, and they only gave us three chances to get the programs right (computer time was valuable at the data centre).  I really hated getting the syntax wrong when the logic was correct.  It was so disheartening.

[Ferb]

I started off learning BASIC on my ZX Spectrum 48k when I was 4 or 5 years old.  (The 'peek and poke around' joke earlier mainly makes me think of that - the buttons on the keyboard had all the commands on, so I knew them all even if I didn't know how to use them. I'd know how to use them all know of course, but lots of them were constantly calling out to be explored at that age.)  I didn't like the hard keyboard when I got a 128k as a replacement - I felt keys should be made of rubber!  I programmed on my Dad's TRS-80 model IV as well, and the 128k spectrum had a great 'PLAY' command from which I learned (via the manual) evefything I knew about music for the first few decades of my life. When I got an Amiga A1200 I learned AMOS, which was like BASIC but which more graphical capabilities for making games, and we enjoyed playing around with that.  Once I got a PC, we soon got Borland C++ on a magazine cover CD and learned to make text programs with that, but making anything Windows based or graphical was more difficult - I managed a bit of it, but it felt like a step back from what we'd been able to accomplish in the past.  At some point we got Blitz Basic, Dark Basic and Visual Basic which were more what I was used to, and made the games at anastasei.co.uk back in my teens, and then started learning C#, though it was years later that I also discovered Unity and was able to make an Android game with that, Hamsterball Sports, thoguh I don't know if that's available anymore since I got tired of Google asking for more forms to be filled in every few months without really getting anything from them in return.  I know at some point I learned python as well, but I didn't like it, and I learned the basics of html, css, and javascript - enough to fiddle around with a webpage.  And at this point, any C-like language usually is fairly quick to pick up.  I'm familiar with assembler - I haven't written in it, but I can read disassembled code when occassionally useful.

[And_Ray]

It's so interesting that everyone so far stated that you've been doing programming back in the days, and you've given up on it. 

I cannot imagine how was it to be a computer programmer back then... No windows OS, assembler code, few KB's of RAM, no IDE, no intellisense (code-completion), no code linters (code analyzers that spot errors).. it's no wonder that all of you gave up programming...

 

The job industry is so much different today.

Currently I work full-time as a full-stack web developer working on enterprise level web applications. It's a demanding and challenging job, but it's nowhere as it was few decades ago. 

 

Being part of the millennial generation ( i'm born some time before that, but still ), I got a jump-start to using computers. From early days i had a computer at home and i would do all sort of thing to it. Reinstalling Windows XP was among the first accomplishments  Every now and then i would watch videos about programming.. i would occasionally start to read some book for C++, Visual Basic etc... i would do some calculator program and then give up. I would read different computer blogs about what-not. That way i laid the foundation that would later serve me when i would dive deep into web programming. I attended few Microsoft courses after high school instead of going to University and shortly after that i got an internship in a company, that would later offer me a job and I'm still there...

 

[Myew]

Despite being a tech enthusiast and PC/console geek forever, I've never been able to get deep into or stick with programming. The farthest I got through is this 15+ year old C++ for Dummies book a Brother gave me, he knew how much I liked computers and that probably was my best chance at any kind of job. I think our first computer had to be reformatted after I started downloading random C++ games to test and look into from the internet... I maybe learned a little bit of HTML for a Geocities website. I can't remember any of that stuff anymore. I started taking computer networking courses at the local tech school 10+ years ago, but that didn't last for more than about a week either. I generally prefer the practical application and hardware interface side of things: Art, music, games, video.

Edited July 12, 2018 by Myew

[Sylv]

My husband is a very logical thinker, which I believe you need to be in order to be successful as a programmer. He is mostly self-taught, having left high school after Grade 11. When he returned to get his GED (General Education Diploma - equal to a high school diploma), he needed four credits. He had to take grade 12 English, which he completed in 3 months. Then he completed his grade 12 math in 3 weeks! The instructor asked him to commit to a 3-month period in his class for another credit - he became the teacher's assistant for that time. For his final credit, he wrote an inventory program for the school's audio and video library. (this is all in the early 1980s.)

 

He did this while working full time as a courier for a medical laboratory (we were newly married as well). When the lab started installing computers, his boss put him up for a job as a systems coordinator - this pretty much involved travelling to different locations and setting up the computers, including pulling wires, etc. In addition, he was the first person of contact for anyone having computer problems. Any software issues he was to call in to the computer department in Toronto - except, he started fixing the problems and then calling the computer department ("hey, this and this wasn't working, so I did such-and-such"). Sixteen months later he was working in the computer department. He still works for the same company - it will be 37 years in September.

Edited July 12, 2018 by Sylv

[For Hire 24]

Ah yes...Basic...brings back memories...Nascom...Comodore PET...floppies...

Sinclair ZX Spectrum...( now available again ! )....BBC Micro...etc.

 

A quick quiz based on Boolean algebra : There is an island with two villages, in one village, the natives always tell the truth and are kind to strangers, in the other village however, the natives always tell lies and kill strangers...a stranger stands at the fork in the road, one road leads to the good village the other leads to certain death.

The visitor sees a native but does not know which tribe he is from, and he is only allowed to ask one question.....what one question must he ask to live ?  🤓❓

[For Hire 24]

On 7/10/2018 at 3:47 PM, Katty said:

... computers that is?

What kind of programming do you do?

What language(s) do you work in?

 

As for me, my chief interest is web development, although I'm also interested in apps.

I'm primarily working in that crazy language known as JavaScript, but I'm also learning c/c++ so that I don't get to thinking that JavaScript is normal XD.

I know some Java/JavaFX, but it's so bloated. In the future, I'd also like to learn lisp/clojure.

 

 

In the new world, Jehovah’s spirit may well enhance your programming abilities in a completely different but more advanced direction that we could not possibly conceive at this time....remember Bezalel and Oholiab, Jehovah didn’t use the skills gained in Egypt, he had better ones !   But first we need to get there.

 

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

I want to programm DNA of a tree to grow tree houses. That was we can 'twig' it as we progress or need to move.

Older
{still waiting for the 'Wiser'}

[Qapla]

54 minutes ago, For Hire 24 said:

what one question must he ask to live ?

 

I know the answer but will wait to see if anyone else does

[For Hire 24]

like your avatar..Warf ..security officer. 😁