6 ms·

The first "useful" program I ever wrote was in QBasic. In 5th or 6th grade (can't recall which), for spelling assignments, we'd be given a list of words and we'

by ssharp 9y ago

The first "useful" program I ever wrote was in QBasic. In 5th or 6th grade (can't recall which), for spelling assignments, we'd be given a list of words and we'd have to write them 10 times each. I asked the teacher if we'd be allowed to type the list and print them out and she agreed to it. I hacked together a little program where I'd type in a word and then it would automatically print out 10 copies of it to my dot matrix printer. When I first started, I really had no idea what QBasic even was. I think I was just poking around the DOS file system one day looking for EXE files and found it.

laumars 9y ago
I love it when the effort put into being lazy is greater than the effort required to do the job in the first place. For what it's worth, I've fallen into the same trap many times myself. Related XKCD: https://xkcd.com/974/ https://xkcd.com/974/
- ssharp 9y ago
  I think with programming there is so much value to just trying out different things because you're constantly learning that this effort isn't necessarily wasted. Some people probably learn by working on meaningful projects, others (like me, apparently) are just trying to get out of doing something they don't want to do. Or maybe I'm just justifying being lazy!
  - Jtsummers 9y ago
    "We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris." -- Larry Wall Myself and many others I've met who took up programming independent of their college degree seemed to have started because of laziness and impatience. We wanted something done, but we didn't want to do it manually (or all the work manually). My first real programs in high school were solving data analysis problems for my science classes and automating a survey that I was using for a science fair experiment.
  - laumars 9y ago
    Oh I didn't mean to imply it was an wasted effort. Far from it. It just amuses me how much effort us geeks put into the avoidance of manual or repetitive jobs. I don't think it's a bad virtue to have either. It's just the lengths we sometimes goto can sometimes be a source for humour.
rpiguy 9y ago
My high school required everyone to take a "typing" class and the instructor didn't know the word processor installed could do cut and paste. Those of us that were computer savvy in the early 90s therefore were the fastest typists in the class by a wide margin :-)
- sathackr 9y ago
  Nearly the same thing happened to me. Except the instructor felt the other kids would be dissuaded by my typing and told me I couldn't stay in the class. And, similar to your case, typing was a prerequisite to taking any other computer course. They wouldn't give me credit, but wouldn't let me stay in the class either. I would up taking it in summer school of 9th grade, spent 2 days, the program clocked me at 139wpm and the teacher(a different one) said I couldn't stay there either. She talked to the office and I got to hang out in the school office for the rest of the summer. What fun. All because they didn't want to make the other kids feel bad. At least they gave me credit for the class.
- kej 9y ago
  I had the same experience, except the teacher asked me, since I knew how to type and use a computer, if I'd like to take a programming class instead.
- probably_wrong 9y ago
  My brother had the opposite experience: we didn't know what "copy and paste" was, but one of my brother's classmates did. So they told the typing class professor, and he forbade everyone from bringing printed homework. My parents had to buy a typewriter, despite having a perfectly good printer at home.
cr0sh 9y ago
Are you my doppelganger? Because I did the exact same thing - back in 1984, though - using my TRS-80 Color Computer. My teachers had very little experience or knowledge of "home computing" - and had no problem with me turning in assignments I did on my computer.
- brassattax 9y ago
  I had the Color Computer 2 with a DMP-105 printer. I wrote an entire report using LPRINT statements
overcast 9y ago
Let's just hope you didn't misspell any of them :)

by ssharp 9y ago

laumars 9y ago

I love it when the effort put into being lazy is greater than the effort required to do the job in the first place. For what it's worth, I've fallen into the same trap many times myself. Related XKCD: https://xkcd.com/974/ https://xkcd.com/974/

ssharp 9y ago
I think with programming there is so much value to just trying out different things because you're constantly learning that this effort isn't necessarily wasted. Some people probably learn by working on meaningful projects, others (like me, apparently) are just trying to get out of doing something they don't want to do. Or maybe I'm just justifying being lazy!
- Jtsummers 9y ago
  "We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris." -- Larry Wall Myself and many others I've met who took up programming independent of their college degree seemed to have started because of laziness and impatience. We wanted something done, but we didn't want to do it manually (or all the work manually). My first real programs in high school were solving data analysis problems for my science classes and automating a survey that I was using for a science fair experiment.
- laumars 9y ago
  Oh I didn't mean to imply it was an wasted effort. Far from it. It just amuses me how much effort us geeks put into the avoidance of manual or repetitive jobs. I don't think it's a bad virtue to have either. It's just the lengths we sometimes goto can sometimes be a source for humour.

rpiguy 9y ago

My high school required everyone to take a "typing" class and the instructor didn't know the word processor installed could do cut and paste. Those of us that were computer savvy in the early 90s therefore were the fastest typists in the class by a wide margin :-)

sathackr 9y ago
Nearly the same thing happened to me. Except the instructor felt the other kids would be dissuaded by my typing and told me I couldn't stay in the class. And, similar to your case, typing was a prerequisite to taking any other computer course. They wouldn't give me credit, but wouldn't let me stay in the class either. I would up taking it in summer school of 9th grade, spent 2 days, the program clocked me at 139wpm and the teacher(a different one) said I couldn't stay there either. She talked to the office and I got to hang out in the school office for the rest of the summer. What fun. All because they didn't want to make the other kids feel bad. At least they gave me credit for the class.
kej 9y ago
I had the same experience, except the teacher asked me, since I knew how to type and use a computer, if I'd like to take a programming class instead.
probably_wrong 9y ago
My brother had the opposite experience: we didn't know what "copy and paste" was, but one of my brother's classmates did. So they told the typing class professor, and he forbade everyone from bringing printed homework. My parents had to buy a typewriter, despite having a perfectly good printer at home.

cr0sh 9y ago

Are you my doppelganger? Because I did the exact same thing - back in 1984, though - using my TRS-80 Color Computer. My teachers had very little experience or knowledge of "home computing" - and had no problem with me turning in assignments I did on my computer.

brassattax 9y ago
I had the Color Computer 2 with a DMP-105 printer. I wrote an entire report using LPRINT statements

overcast 9y ago

Let's just hope you didn't misspell any of them :)