Name: Anonymous 2007-07-22 12:58 ID:cB4kE0wG
I'm just an amateur programmer. I have no trouble understanding programming languages though. In fact I think I understand them better than most. Languages are just rules and I am very good at building a correct mental model and logically organizing everything.
What is extremely hard for me to understand is everything besides programming itself, meaning everything that comes after writing the source code. Getting shit to run is very hard. No one has laid out all the rules in one place. Compiling, linking, assembling and this crap just 'works', unless of course it doesn't work in which case it's time to learn a new rule that you never heard of before. You have different OSes, different hardware, different libraries, different everything each with their own standards and incompatibilities. And you can't just decide to figure it all out and make one big mental model because the information you need is - in one way or another - almost secret; the information is either locked up in closed source, or is in documentation that you have no idea how to find, or maybe it just plain doesn't exist.
I know something is wrong because part of my brain believes I should just say 'fuck it' start all over from the bottom up; program in assembly (intimidating as it may be, it is just a language) and slowly build all the abstractions I'm used to on top of that. I know that is stupid though, but it sums up my frustrations.
Okay, so how many people can relate to this? And - dare I ask - is there a way to find any of this information laid out in one place?
What is extremely hard for me to understand is everything besides programming itself, meaning everything that comes after writing the source code. Getting shit to run is very hard. No one has laid out all the rules in one place. Compiling, linking, assembling and this crap just 'works', unless of course it doesn't work in which case it's time to learn a new rule that you never heard of before. You have different OSes, different hardware, different libraries, different everything each with their own standards and incompatibilities. And you can't just decide to figure it all out and make one big mental model because the information you need is - in one way or another - almost secret; the information is either locked up in closed source, or is in documentation that you have no idea how to find, or maybe it just plain doesn't exist.
I know something is wrong because part of my brain believes I should just say 'fuck it' start all over from the bottom up; program in assembly (intimidating as it may be, it is just a language) and slowly build all the abstractions I'm used to on top of that. I know that is stupid though, but it sums up my frustrations.
Okay, so how many people can relate to this? And - dare I ask - is there a way to find any of this information laid out in one place?