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Post by nicethugbert on Jan 4, 2009 22:22:07 GMT -5
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Post by sturm15 on Jan 4, 2009 22:26:50 GMT -5
Been using Stumbleupon I see...
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Post by nicethugbert on Jan 4, 2009 23:11:51 GMT -5
Yes, it's perfect!
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Post by nicethugbert on Jan 4, 2009 23:59:24 GMT -5
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Post by Beldar on Jan 5, 2009 1:09:42 GMT -5
The Perl description is my favorite, but you only use perl in that situation if you can't figure out how to do the task with some combination of grep, sed, and awk.
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Post by nicethugbert on Jan 5, 2009 16:40:27 GMT -5
That's what happens when you name a kid Grep. He says awkard stuff.
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Post by Loudent2 on Jan 5, 2009 16:40:38 GMT -5
Wow, this programming stuff just gets weirder. How do you guys do it? I remember the exact moment I knew I had to be a programmer. I was 12 years old and my mother had scrimped and saved (we were poor) enough to buy me a commodore 64 (bless her soul, I should call her). I hooked that baby up to our television (no monitors for little guys back then) and turned it on and basked in the warm blue glow, comforted in the knowledge that I had 38911 basic bytes free  (yes, I still remember that number, even after 25 years). I knew, at that moment, that computers would dominate my life, so I decided then and there, that if they were to dominate my life, I needed to be able to exert some control over them. |
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Post by Beldar on Jan 5, 2009 17:26:08 GMT -5
Ah yes, the wonderful world of RF modulators. My parents bought us a TI 99/4A in the early 80s. I was determined to learn how it worked. I got a few issues of a programming magazine for kids called K Power. I eventually got pretty proficient at BASIC and even begged my parents to buy me the extended basic. Software for the TI came on plug-in solid state modules (I assume these were ROMs with connectors now). I learned to create sprites (moving graphics) and about basic programming things like range checking (which is all to often ignored by veteran programmers). To save my work I had to connect the computer to an audio cassette recorder with a cable - boy those tapes sounded funny when you just listened to them.
I had a friend with the C64. It was newer and far cooler than my TI. I still feel jealous. The C64 had a game called Paradroid that we used to play quite a bit. It was a boolean logic puzzle, iirc. Probably 16 or so years ago I found a C64 emulator for the PC and a bunch of the old C64 games. I wonder if anyone still has that available. I should look.
It only seems weird. I would equate it to a foreign language. If you are not familiar with the terms, it sounds like gibberish, but for the most part it is not that complicated.
Computers are very literal. They do exactly what you tell them to do (well, I guess exceptions arise when you have hardware bugs or faults like overheating). The problem for most people in dealing with computers is an unwillingness to think with the rigorous specificity that computers demand. Computers really only do a couple of things - move data from one location to another and perform arithmetic operations on data. They do these tasks very well. To create a game like NWN2 merely by moving and performing math operations on data is a lot of work. Fortunately, the task can be organized into operations of ever increasing complexity. The programmer that is writing video game code that calls a direct X API is leveraging a huge amount of work (probably thousands of man years) done by others. He really doesn't have to know much at all about how to translate certain ideas into assembly language. Basically, the technology is so complicated that no one person could possibly recreate it all, but the little individual pieces that people work on are usually pretty manageable.
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Post by mammothtruk on Jan 5, 2009 18:20:06 GMT -5
never program for DX.... come on folks OpenGL is the name of the game.
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Post by nicethugbert on Jan 5, 2009 19:53:15 GMT -5
Wow, this programming stuff just gets weirder. How do you guys do it? I remember the exact moment I knew I had to be a programmer. I was 12 years old and my mother had scrimped and saved (we were poor) enough to buy me a commodore 64 (bless her soul, I should call her). I hooked that baby up to our television (no monitors for little guys back then) and turned it on and basked in the warm blue glow, comforted in the knowledge that I had 38911 basic bytes free (yes, I still remember that number, even after 25 years). I knew, at that moment, that computers would dominate my life, so I decided then and there, that if they were to dominate my life, I needed to be able to exert some control over them. Did you ever refer to anything by the name HAL? Did it call you Dave? I guess you and Beldar could each tell your respective parents that listening to you guys and getting these machines was the best investment they ever made on your behalf. Top with an "I told you so." So, how do you guys come down from a real language to Revivalist Cobol, I mean NWScript? |
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Post by Loudent2 on Jan 5, 2009 23:21:10 GMT -5
Are you kidding? No pointers and no memory management? It's like a freaking dream. I could use arrays though..... I've worked professionally in 4 languages (and dozens of flavors). The means to matter |
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Post by Beldar on Jan 6, 2009 0:54:43 GMT -5
@ntb - I no longer right software for a living... the sort of work I did and the environment I did it in sucked a lot of the joy out of computers. I think my parents are pretty pleased with how encouraging that particular interest turned out though. I provide free computer support for my extended family (ah, the hazards of knowledge).
The languages I worked in professionally in order of volume of work (most frequent first): C, Assembly, C++, python, tkl, and think pascal (weird object oriented pascal that on a mac). I might be forgetting something and there is definitely a huge drop-off in volume of work after C++, but that should pretty much cover it.
I would endorse programming as an avocation rather than a profession. Much of the work can be drudgery. I like to program as a hobby now.
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(yes, I still remember that number, even after 25 years).