Gavri Fernandez ([info]ga_woo) wrote,
@ 2006-07-25 23:40:00
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Why I will never be a Great Programmer
Ask a Great Programmer how they got into programming and you'll hear something like this:
I used to tinker with this Commodore SX-64 Portable in school. No, I think it really began with the HP calculator I used to program with their RPN stack language when I was 12 years old. And then it was fun making the MITS Altair 8800 do weird stuff. Basically, I realised at a very young age that I was surrounded by programmable digital machines.

Nobody ever says: I worked in Turbo C on Windows. That's what we had in our college labs.

Damn.

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[info]saiprasad
2006-07-25 07:25 pm UTC (link)
Legit LOL. The nudge has been worth it! :)

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[info]ga_woo
2006-07-26 12:12 pm UTC (link)
Thanks for the nudge.

Nobody else bothered to nudge me :(
:P

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(no subject) - [info]vijucat, 2006-08-30 02:46 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ga_woo, 2006-09-02 11:28 am UTC

[info]pinak
2006-07-25 08:56 pm UTC (link)
Borland C :|

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[info]ga_woo
2006-07-26 12:11 pm UTC (link)
Borland C was costiler than Turbo. I'm sure my college and school never paid for the bloody things though. So it doesn't matter.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]anantj, 2006-08-01 07:35 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ga_woo, 2006-08-01 09:05 am UTC

[info]groovitude
2006-07-25 11:59 pm UTC (link)
I'm far from a great programmer, but I did start on Commodore 64. My first program, which I did with my best friend, was a RPG airport simulation, kind of a Zork on a tarmac. We used Basic to code it. Nostalgia is awesome.

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[info]ga_woo
2006-07-26 12:09 pm UTC (link)
Discovered yesterday that the Commodore 64 is the best selling computer ever. We in middle-class India moved from the Abacus to the Pentium.

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(no subject) - [info]bluesmoon, 2006-07-26 12:30 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ga_woo, 2006-07-26 01:34 pm UTC

(Anonymous)
2006-07-26 06:30 am UTC (link)
This seriously needs to be [info]meta_quoted

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[info]ga_woo
2006-07-26 06:49 am UTC (link)
Why anonymous?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2006-07-26 08:37 am UTC

[info]fugney
2006-07-26 07:30 am UTC (link)
*tch tch* you're back.

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[info]ga_woo
2006-07-26 12:07 pm UTC (link)
Why tch tch?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]fugney, 2006-07-26 02:14 pm UTC

[info]crabbycool
2006-07-26 08:25 am UTC (link)
thank god! i was wondering if you were just busy or had a momentary writers' block!

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[info]ga_woo
2006-07-26 12:07 pm UTC (link)
I so love it when you keep implying that I 'write' :D

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[info]rohandsa
2006-07-26 08:27 am UTC (link)
It's always sounds cool to have worked with machines have random X's and a series of numbers behind them. Though I have to admit too, the days of digital novelty are passe.

Wonder if generations later, people will start talking about the pretty pentium...

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[info]ga_woo
2006-07-26 12:06 pm UTC (link)
I won't be talking about it, I know. The difference is that they were programming the machine. When I first started programming, I didn't feel like I was programming a Pentium. I was a in DOS emulation on Windows.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]rohandsa, 2006-07-26 12:25 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ga_woo, 2006-07-26 12:31 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]rohandsa, 2006-07-26 12:44 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ga_woo, 2006-07-26 12:50 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ga_woo, 2006-07-26 12:51 pm UTC

[info]subtle_blues
2006-07-26 11:40 am UTC (link)
err.. we were taught LOGO n BASIC in school? Me no programmer but isn't that how it all began?? :D

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[info]subtle_blues
2006-07-26 11:41 am UTC (link)
s/school?/school./

(Reply to this) (Parent)
(no subject) - [info]ga_woo, 2006-07-26 12:02 pm UTC

[info]suddenlynita
2006-07-26 01:12 pm UTC (link)
:))

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[info]vaguelyalive
2006-07-26 02:53 pm UTC (link)
I kinda understood the last sentence. ::is proud::

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[info]ga_woo
2006-07-27 06:27 am UTC (link)
In case you can't remember or understand sometime later

http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict1&Query=damn&Strategy=*&Database=*&submit=Submit+query

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[info]mansu
2006-07-26 04:06 pm UTC (link)
Also, the meaning of great is relative :).

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[info]ga_woo
2006-07-27 06:28 am UTC (link)
Yeah. That's actually why I was able to make this post without feeling too bad :D

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[info]teemus
2006-07-26 09:02 pm UTC (link)
Count me in.

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[info]ga_woo
2006-07-27 06:30 am UTC (link)
Surely there are more like us. They're just hiding.

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[info]ma7ur
2006-07-27 08:22 pm UTC (link)
I once configured a webserver on a rabbit microcontroller to output the temperature when the IP was pinged. Had a couple of HTML pages and the feeling was immense.

But now its just application programming......

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[info]ga_woo
2006-07-27 08:24 pm UTC (link)
This is really not about applications vs. systems programming. It's about how you began.

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(no subject) - [info]ga_woo, 2006-07-27 08:24 pm UTC

[info]anantj
2006-08-01 07:36 am UTC (link)
Damn! Now that thought brings a sense of programming inadequecy :(

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[info]ga_woo
2006-08-01 05:33 pm UTC (link)
Alt-F7 F7? You too?

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(no subject) - [info]anantj, 2006-08-02 07:45 am UTC

[info]strix_an_stones
2006-08-21 07:48 pm UTC (link)
...in college I had FORTRAN. I think we lost bigger :\

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[info]ga_woo
2006-08-22 02:32 am UTC (link)
Actually, all we were taught was FORTRAN and Pascal. We learnt C ourselves because it was supposed to get us jobs when we finished college or something.

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(no subject) - [info]strix_an_stones, 2006-08-22 12:09 pm UTC

[info]londonbard
2006-08-22 04:02 pm UTC (link)
Thank you for putting up that "Interests Meme". It was beautiful, (mine was, anyway.)

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[info]ga_woo
2006-08-26 10:43 am UTC (link)
You're welcome. And thank you :)

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(Anonymous)
2006-09-06 12:12 am UTC (link)
yah I agree with you on that one... cause i've asked that question before....

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[info]ga_woo
2006-09-06 12:15 am UTC (link)
Who have you asked?

And why anonymous?

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[info]noelladsa
2006-09-08 07:04 am UTC (link)
Even Joel agrees ;)

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[info]ga_woo
2006-09-08 03:25 pm UTC (link)
Woe

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[info]xxhelloworldxx
2006-09-08 04:19 pm UTC (link)
Doesn't mean you can't keep leaning, doll!

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[info]ga_woo
2006-09-09 07:58 am UTC (link)
Learning doesn't mean I've ever going to be among the very best :)

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I too started with Turbo C++
(Anonymous)
2006-09-24 08:01 pm UTC (link)
That isn't something new for someone in India. All of undergrad students work in labs on TC.

I personally started with some BASIC at school but TC was where I caught interest.

But somehow it ain't geeky enough to say that we started in TurboC.. Maybe we say "I started with small programs for 16-bit machines".. Sounds a bit better, doesnt it :D

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Why I'm a Great Programmer
(Anonymous)
2006-10-07 11:34 am UTC (link)
TRS-80 Model III.

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Re: Why I'm a Great Programmer
[info]ga_woo
2006-10-07 11:49 am UTC (link)
I didn't say that there was a corollary :P

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(Anonymous)
2006-10-09 07:10 pm UTC (link)
Trash 80 model 1 basic -> z80 machine code -> turbo c -> turbo c++ -> borland c -> msvc 1.51 -> msvc 5 -> msvc 6 -> msvc 2003 *pukes* -> msvc 6

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Hrm... Then what does this mean.
(Anonymous)
2006-10-09 11:59 pm UTC (link)
My first programming that I can remember was with this:

Vtech Precomputer 1000 (http://rasterweb.net/raster/computers/vtech.html)

Is there any hope for me, or am I stuck at being a good programmer?

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Nobody says, "When I grow up, I wanna be a junkie."
(Anonymous)
2006-10-10 02:18 am UTC (link)
but that's what i've ended up... a Microsoft developer!

and yes, i got started down that road to perdition with Borland products... turbo pascal and then turbo C++.


;-)

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The real reason
(Anonymous)
2006-10-16 07:25 pm UTC (link)
The reason why these people are great programmers is because the farther you go back in time the less complicated computers get. It is easy to understand everything that’s going on under the hood of an early HP calculator. To be a great programmer you really have to know what is going on underneath, how the machine works and what exactly it is doing. And once you have this base, build upon it.

Now, the reason YOU are never going to be a great programmer is because instead of hitting eBay and picking up a used C64 for $25 and figuring out just what these people know that you don’t, you invent excuses and give up.

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