How did you learn to program

[quahappy]

It has been BASIC all the way for me with a little machine code where it was needed.

Started programming on the ZX81, entering all those programs from magazines only to find half of them didn't work. Frustrating it was, but it did give me pleasure at the same time getting them to work - first taste of debugging I suppose.

Continued on the Spectrum, just doing various short games that never got any further than outside of my house. In other words, they were shite

When I bought my A500, I initially used AmigaBasic for a while until AMOS was released. Threw myself deep into it, learning it inside out, gradually progressing to AMOS Professional (and Compiler), which finally led to the PD game I did. Annoying thing is... after a gap of some 11 years I loaded AMOS into WinUAE to dabble with it, and I've forgotten how to use a lot of it! So many commands and syntaxes!

About the only book I bought was some programming book I bought from Future Publishing (Amiga Format) by Stephen errrr, forget his surname now, but most of the time I just kept programming and testing and debugging 'till I got the results I want. Apart from that, I used AmigaDOS / CLI scripts a lot to do me own compilation disks of my pictures and crap music mods.

[snyp]

from reverse engineering. i guess i have my action replay to thank for getting me interested.

my recent ex-boss hated me for my unorganised 'hacking'-style coding. instead of spending a week on logic charts i'd just slip back into my old habit of making it up as i went along. i can see how this is bad.. but my code was 10 times faster than anyone else's at work. and much more 'leet'. haha.

[jrom]

haha... how we all 'love' those l33t coders at work

[snyp]

=p

but take this example also..

most demo artists probably never saw a flowchart in their lives.. but they'd show what the amiga could 'really' do, while in the meantime some software company would spend months just planning something that eventually didn't even really.. 'look' all that great.

on the other side are games from companies like team 17 or digital illusions.. former demo artists who produced games full of shortcuts and cool amiga 'tricks'.

by the time i'd spent several days on a flowchart, i got so bored i forgot what the point was of even getting out of bed to go to work.

[andreas]

Well that is the difference between people that have studied engineering and those who "only" were mechanics and stuff. The latter ones need not be dumber therefore! OK maybe they would not word everything so ooooh-so sophisticatedly, let alone being very skilled in grammar --- but, as you say, they might be more experienced because they just TRIED it and EXPERIENCED things instead of mere thinking of "Could theory #1 work? No? Maybe theory #2 could work then? Not either? ..."
I think when they have thought through their theories, you are 90% finished with your code. But that's old hat - graduates vs. people who just DO it.

---------------------------------------------------------

Ehh where were we? True, the subject.

Well, my first step to it was the IBM PC with an (afair) 8088 CPU; first, there was BASIC, then there was BASICA the enhanced version (about 1984). I had a couple of 5.25'' disks with BASIC games on it, and then learnt how to code by just LISTing the code. (save from those that were saved in a protected format using SAVE "PRG",P and which resulted in an "Illegal function call" )

Yup. And then came the Amiga with its AmigaBASIC (yuck) but what could I do? ABasiC by Metacomco was MILES better, but not shipped anymore from WB 1.2 on.
So I had to bite the bullet and program in AmigaBASIC, as I was unable to get a copy of a C compiler (Manx etc.) without paying for it, and these things were VERY expensive

Some years later, I got KickPascal, but it was HORRIBLE: for some easy gfx routines, you had to utterly write "half a compiler", whereas in AmigaBASIC you could use either built-in functions (LINE, PSET ... ) or library functions from .library files converted to .bmap.
Some weirdoes even went like C=64 programmers: they positioned pixel-exact by POKE'ing the Rastport (WINDOW(8)+36 / +38).
When possible, I used Move&(), though.

ok that was my little story

[ant512]

Originally Posted by jrom

haha... how we all 'love' those l33t coders at work

I would kill to have a l33t coder working with me.

I did three interviews the other day - we were recruiting a new coder to help on a project I took over nearly a year ago. One of the main problems I have with it is the way the previous guy structured the system, and I wanted to make sure that the new guy understood enough about computer science not to make the same mistake. Basically, the data looks like this:

                  M                Main object
                  |
          ----------------
          |    |     |    |
          S    S     S    S        Sub objects
       ----  ----  ----  ----
       |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
       S  S  S  S  S  S  S  S     More sub objects

The previous guy had made a hell of a mess, representing each object with a different class.

I drew this out for all three candidates, mentioning things like "recursion", emphasising the similarity of the data within the objects at each level (you could, perhaps, just use one class to represent all of the objects if you planned it carefully), stressing the need for a simple interface to the whole structure, and I even mentioned the possibility of adding new levels of sub-objects, maybe even to n levels (where n is any integer greater than 2).

Not one of them mentioned the magic word I was looking for. Can anyone guess which classic data structure I wanted them to recognise? Remember, three people failed this test, each of whom claimed to have 10 years coding experience, an impressive mixture of languages (including i386 asm and C++), and were trying to get a job paying in excess of £30k a year.

[Adderly]

looks like a tree

[sarek2k]

@ant512 that means NOTHING to me i gave up after

10 print "Sarek2k rules";
20 Goto 10

run

on the old speccy lol

I managed a map convertor on Amos but all it did was a take a picture of .iff type and save it out as some other file can't even remeber what it was now lol

code is either something you get or something you don't!

So i won't be applying for that 30k job your offering

Bah i'll stick to graphics

[snyp]

Originally Posted by ant512

I would kill to have a l33t coder working with me.

I did three interviews the other day - we were recruiting a new coder to help on a project I took over nearly a year ago. One of the main problems I have with it is the way the previous guy structured the system, and I wanted to make sure that the new guy understood enough about computer science not to make the same mistake. Basically, the data looks like this:

                  M                Main object
                  |
          ----------------
          |    |     |    |
          S    S     S    S        Sub objects
       ----  ----  ----  ----
       |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
       S  S  S  S  S  S  S  S     More sub objects

The previous guy had made a hell of a mess, representing each object with a different class.

I drew this out for all three candidates, mentioning things like "recursion", emphasising the similarity of the data within the objects at each level (you could, perhaps, just use one class to represent all of the objects if you planned it carefully), stressing the need for a simple interface to the whole structure, and I even mentioned the possibility of adding new levels of sub-objects, maybe even to n levels (where n is any integer greater than 2).

Not one of them mentioned the magic word I was looking for. Can anyone guess which classic data structure I wanted them to recognise? Remember, three people failed this test, each of whom claimed to have 10 years coding experience, an impressive mixture of languages (including i386 asm and C++), and were trying to get a job paying in excess of £30k a year.

"hierarchical"..?..

the thing with object orientated design is that the fundamental idea of it is to split things up into 'branches'. it's hard to find something when you need to follow the branches to get to it.

my personal preference.. is a flat design that's arranged into large blocks. kind of like a tree that's been quite severely bastardised by a hedge trimmer. on each of the blocks you have an interface controlling what it's there for. the internals of those blocks aren't your concern.. so who cares if they are a mess? if something needs to be taken out of automation because it needs to be controlled by the end-user, i raise it to the 'control panel' of my block.

c++ is a bugger for splitting things up.. i still prefer C but the support for it is waning. asm is my favourite for just doing what the hell i want without thinking about anything like structure at all.

[ant512]

Originally Posted by Adderly

looks like a tree

Originally Posted by snyp

kind of like a tree

Someone give those two a job! That's all I wanted - someone to look at the diagram and say, "It looks like a tree." That's precisely what the original developer failed to grasp, and why I'm having a difficult time trying to re-write his arse-backwards object model whilst the system is already live.

Anyway, back on-topic now!

[musashi5150]

Don't suppose your company is base in Norfolk/Suffolk is it? I'm looking for another job and I'd be prepared to take a lot less than 30K

[Galahad/FLT]

I'd take less as well, but it would have to be ASM and on the Amiga..... bugger!

[ant512]

Originally Posted by musashi5150

Don't suppose your company is base in Norfolk/Suffolk is it? I'm looking for another job and I'd be prepared to take a lot less than 30K

Nope, sorry! It's in Brum, and we eventually decided to employ the least incompetent of the three. I'm very dubious but have been over-ruled. At least we didn't settle for the one who thought that the best way to filter data from SQL Server was to pull the entire contents of a table into a VB.NET class and filter the recordset in there. We've got a 50GB database to interact with that's in an office 200 miles away - his system would take weeks to process even the simplest queries.

What is it with VB coders?

[mr_0rga5m]

VB coders are wannabe coders

[BippyM]

Originally Posted by mr_0rga5m

VB coders are wannabe coders

Me too.. though def not with VB or with PC :P

[snyp]

hehe.. all in favour of sending VB (and actually VB-script for that matter) to room 101?

o/

[jrom]

Hahahaha... VB... *sigh* Java is the way to go!

[Ray Norrish]

Originally Posted by snyp

from reverse engineering. i guess i have my action replay to thank for getting me interested.

my recent ex-boss hated me for my unorganised 'hacking'-style coding. instead of spending a week on logic charts i'd just slip back into my old habit of making it up as i went along. i can see how this is bad.. but my code was 10 times faster than anyone else's at work. and much more 'leet'. haha.

haha.. I know your sort
One of my programmers has some ludicrously unreadable style. In the corporate programming environment, there's no room for l33t stylee

[Ray Norrish]

Originally Posted by snyp

"hierarchical"..?..

the thing with object orientated design is that the fundamental idea of it is to split things up into 'branches'. it's hard to find something when you need to follow the branches to get to it.

my personal preference.. is a flat design that's arranged into large blocks. kind of like a tree that's been quite severely bastardised by a hedge trimmer. on each of the blocks you have an interface controlling what it's there for. the internals of those blocks aren't your concern.. so who cares if they are a mess? if something needs to be taken out of automation because it needs to be controlled by the end-user, i raise it to the 'control panel' of my block.

c++ is a bugger for splitting things up.. i still prefer C but the support for it is waning. asm is my favourite for just doing what the hell i want without thinking about anything like structure at all.

This is the problem when oldschoolers get involved in OO development

Although, I am suprised at the level of dimwits you got applying for such a position. Most of my coders are on £25kish + car + medical etc, and that's all the average hi-level coder is worth in my opinion.
Too many muppets who call themselves programmers these days ! They have no idea.... and thats not nostalgia talking, it's real - if you have an asm or similar background, then you know a thing or two.. todays programmers are lazy, because too much is done for them, and when a decent problem arises, they haven't got the wherewithall to get past it.

[snyp]

Originally Posted by Ray Norrish

haha.. I know your sort
One of my programmers has some ludicrously unreadable style. In the corporate programming environment, there's no room for l33t stylee

suddenly i am being flamed >=|

i love OO, because i love nicely presented blocks that can be used easily. i care about how my object is used in something bigger, like maybe a class for a larger system, so i want it to interface as effortly as possible via public functions or variables. but i hate being contradicted about how my code within my class is working.

going back again to what i said about the 'control panel' of an object, i wouldn't take apart a microwave and complain to the manufacturer that i think their soldering and circuitry could be better organised. all i care about is how easy it is for me to push the buttons and get my food warmed up.