[ ] Taught yourself (ie. just experimenting on your own with computers and discovered coding)
[ ] Educated at school
[ ] Tutorials from a book or online
[ ] OTHER (specify)
The first one is for me. I discovered QBasic when I was like 12. Good times man. My first programs were terrifyingly crappy but I loved coding instantly. I think that teaching myself QBasic just by experimenting and looking at the syntax in the little Help guide built into the IDE was probably the most fun I've had with a computer (is that sad or not?).
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Anonymous2009-08-29 22:08
i was being taught VB.NET in school.
man, i hate that language, it is literally painful to program in and it didn't really teach me anything about how a computer works. so at the same time i taught myself C using books.
School taught procedural/structured programming. Read actual solid books on the subjects, be they real books or digital versions of real books. Programmed while reading the book. Programmed by myself.
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Anonymous2009-08-29 22:15
>>2
Programming isn't about computers but using programming logic to solve information problems. VB.Net is one such tool to assist in programming.
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Anonymous2009-08-29 22:23
Taught myself. Used a BASIC-like language for windows called JustBasic. Ah man, I was so hooked on that shit. I was pissing my pants from awesome when I made my first sprite move with 50 ugly ass lines of code. Then I switch to python and got rid of it thank god.
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Anonymous2009-08-29 22:24
>>4
indeed.
but having a good understanding of what is going on in the background, under all that abstraction, makes you better at solving those problems
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Anonymous2009-08-29 22:58
Started out with QBasic on a good old 386 in my early days too, back then I didn't even know that there was a difference between all those versions of Basic.
I borrowed tons of books from the local library, so I taught me most of the stuff myself. The courses at school (Pascal) were pretty useless, as I already knew everything and got bored quickly.
Learned a few languages myself for a bit, and by now - being at a university - I finally have decent classes.
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Anonymous2009-08-29 23:14
I first learned programming with a game maker program called Multimedia Fusion. Imagine the program being a big structure of ifs. You would have game objects like sprites, counters, and string displays, and have a program like this for it.
if(player touching item){
destroy item
add 1 to score}
if(player touching enemy){
destroy player
subtract 1 from lives
restart level}
if(player lives==0){
jump to level Game Over}
It was so bad ass. I went through some pretty advanced programming in that despite the simplicity, from trigonometry to making my own game engine(instead of using all the crappy built in movements for sprites), to even making a programming language in this environment.
I quickly outgrew it in favor of python+pygame, but I really miss how simple it was to do things in it, especially since it had so many plug-ins that really made use of win32 library.
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Anonymous2009-08-29 23:23
I took an Intro to C course at UCF and then immediately switched my major from Chemistry to CS.
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Anonymous2009-08-30 0:41
[X] Taught yourself while meditating upon my copies of the TAOCP and SICP on a mountain top in Tibet. No computer. No Internets. Just the power of the Immortal Tao.
Upon my return I implemented a C compiler in Perl with an client/server Web-based IDE based in CSS and Javascipt. I spent a 2 days on this, refining it to perfection before I got bored of it.
I guaranty it.
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Anonymous2009-08-30 0:47
I learned TI-Basic on my TI-83 couple of years ago in high school.
I am currently majoring in Comp Sci.
I learned Haskell with some online tutorials last year (Learn You a Haskell and A Gentle Introduction).
So basically my answer to your question is yes.
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Anonymous2009-08-30 1:48
[X] Taught yourself (modifying other people's scripts to see how it works)
[ ] Educated at school
[ ] Tutorials from a book or online
[ ] OTHER (specify)
Once I found out about Perl and what I could do, I fell in love. I can't imagine life without Perl. I can do everything.
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Anonymous2009-08-30 1:55
[X] Taught yourself (ie. just experimenting on your own with computers and discovered coding)
[X] Educated at school
Started with Z80 assembly programming on the ZX Spectrum, then moved onto the IBM PC.
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Anonymous2009-08-30 2:01
[X] Read ``Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs'' and attained Satori.
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Anonymous2009-08-30 3:14
[X] Taught yourself (ie. just experimenting on your own with computers and discovered coding)
[ ] Educated at school
[ ] Tutorials from a book or online
[ ] OTHER (specify)
tried to start with ASM , failed .
tried to continue with C++ , failed .
tried it with perl , SUCCESS !
started using linux , horrible starting troubles .
after a while i got quite good with unix .
and now i am still learning unix , programming languages , internals , and everything i can find about computers . i can program now in C , perl and now some ASM , improving where i can , still gonna learn C++ .
my story more or less .
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Anonymous2009-08-30 4:44
[X] Taught yourself (ie. just experimenting on your own with computers and discovered coding)
[ ] Educated at school
[X] Tutorials from a book or online
[ ] OTHER (specify)
Taught myself/books. Any other way (like school; we managed to cover a stunning one tenth on the K&R in one semester) is a waste of time.
Tried C++ at first when I was young and excited about the idea of game programming but I gave up after a month.
Then, a year later, I read SICP. Then I learned C(K&R), then PSP+MySql :(, then Haskell(YAHT). And PASCAL somehow came along when I had to write some homework in it. Switched to Lunix in the meantime. I just began experimenting with Erlang and JavaScript recently.
Funny thing is, now that I look at this, I remember myself 18 months ago, when I was like ``oh my god how do these people have mastered so many languages I can't do anything beyond LISP''. Heh.
>>17 I can't do anything beyond an ancient version of C that nobody uses, PHP which my mother could learn in three hours, and two or three purely academic languages that I will never use again in my life
FTFY
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Anonymous2009-08-30 5:30
I was left in a barren desert with nothing but a computer and a first edition SICP. I was near death when I on the eighth day managed to conjure my first cudder... it was the most delicious meal I had ever had, it still brings tears to my eyes...
Met a new friend who knew how to code which gave me the motivation to work through a book on 6510 assembly. Having someone show you how to put the theory to practical use is really helpful.
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Anonymous2009-08-30 9:31
>>20
There is also more code written in COBOL than in your slacker hippy earthy-crunchy C shenanigans. Therefore, COBOL is the most popular language, so any code you write should be in COBOL.
>>25 COMPLETELY MISSING THE POINT
I don't care if it's true or not. My point is that "lines of code written" is not a meaningful indicator of the usefulness of a language.
>>21,22
Even if there were cactii growing in that desert, I had my mouth sewed shut (cudders are best ingested anally, I have found).
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Anonymous2009-08-30 10:45
>>28
Every major modern operating system being written primarily in it IS a meaningful indicator of the usefulness of the language however. YLHAND, python faggot.
>>31
Not of its usefulness in completely unrelated tasks such as diplomacy, welding, or writing an application, a game, a computing cluster or anything besides operating systems.