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What's the point actually? I mean, I admire the diligence required to write it all down but how should this change my outlook on programming? The general idea i
by bundze 10y ago
What's the point actually? I mean, I admire the diligence required to write it all down but how should this change my outlook on programming? The general idea is 'in order to be a good programmer, keep doing computer stuff'. Do we need extensive biographies full of details to learn this?
- jakobegger 10y agoI don't think there needs to be a point. I enjoyed reading the story, and comparing it to my own.
- coldtea 10y agoThe point is to enjoy (or not) the adventure of another fellow human being in his way of becoming a better programmer. To identify with some stages that you yourself went through, or to consider some difficulties that he had that never occurred to you as particularly difficult. One can even get ideas about how to make teaching programming easier, or how to ease the setup/deployment of some open source project based on the author's experiences. Heck, one can find a hundred messages and ideas to take out from this post.
- mongo0se 10y agoI agree. I thought it was boring, as well as pointless.
- toolz 10y agoThe point of writing this bio probably had comparable inspiration to your own when deciding if you should make this comment. You wanted to make the comment and thought other people might want to read it. Do we gain anything from your comment? No. Do we gain anything from the bio? Maybe not. Did that stop any of us from pushing text out onto the internet?
- bundze 10y agoGood point. Can't argue with that.
- mturmon 10y agoIt's a good question. I came up much earlier than the OP did, so I enjoyed comparing his path to mine. His story gives some context to how younger developers think. For instance, the kind of small enthusiast projects he was doing (webpages and php) were different from mine (interpreters or games -- single-computer stuff). But there are still some similarities -- his reasons for learning vi(m) and (La)TeX were basically the same as mine -- word of mouth from people who knew more.
- groovy2shoes 10y ago> His story gives some context to how younger developers think. For instance, the kind of small enthusiast projects he was doing (webpages and php) were different from mine (interpreters or games -- single-computer stuff). For the record, I'm also a "younger developer", only about one year older than OP. I was never particularly interested in the Web or PHP or anything of the sort. What inspired me to become a programmer was primarily Nintendo (NES and later SNES) -- I wanted to make games. As a young child, when asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I'd tell people that I wanted to "make MegaMan". In my early teens, I became a fan of the Final Fantasy series, and like many others at the time, I enjoyed creating little Japanese-style RPGs. Hearing about some technique called "scripting", I decided to write my own interpreter, and fell in love. Since then, I've been primarily a PL geek with a deep interest in programming languages, compilers, interpreters, and related subjects (such as PL design, PL theory, type theory, etc.). I've also dabbled in operating systems and other low-level systems programming stuff. For whatever reason, I enjoy very low-level programming (as in assembly language, no higher-level than C or Forth) and very high-level programming (as in Lisp, Prolog, ML, Haskell, etc.) -- anything in the middle (Java, for example) leaves me feeling utterly bored.