3 ms·
After BASIC and LOGO, Turbo Pascal was the first language I became fluent in, during my pre-teens. If I recall correctly, I learned everything from the editor/I
by lioeters 6y ago
After BASIC and LOGO, Turbo Pascal was the first language I became fluent in, during my pre-teens. If I recall correctly, I learned everything from the editor/IDE, help screens, examples, and existing code.
What really accelerated my learning was being given a large codebase (a bulletin-board system) to work on, and seeing how it all fit together to make a running application.
Next was C in my teens, I learned enough to create a little language that controls hardware via serial port, RS232. I remember starting to learn C++ and object-oriented programming.
For some reason, I drifted away from computers after that. Like the author, I found myself in various countries and occupations, always feeling that I had untapped potential and talent, but never able to make the transition.
Fortunately, in my late 30's I rediscovered the joy of programming. The web was the gateway, starting with HTML and CSS. Once I got the hang of it, it was unstoppable - I just kept learning and building more and more every day, because it was so fun. It took a couple years to become a full-time, professional programmer. I picked up server-side languages, released open-source libraries, which led to clients and later co-founding software companies.
A funny thing is, things have come full circle, and now I spend a lot of my time with TypeScript, another creation of Anders Hejlsberg. How the language integrates with the editor (in my case VS Code) to support software development, showing hints, smart autocompletion, navigating type definitions.. It reminds me of Turbo Pascal's IDE in some aspects.
---
The past year or so, I've had a lot of fun with Raspberry Pi. It's a perfect hobby, and I'm now re-learning C so I can control hardware. I remember being ten years old, reading a manual on 8086 assembly language. So happy to be back where I started, with that sweet childhood joy of tinkering with computers.