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I'm "only" 39, but it's been 30 years since I've written my first line of code. And I have to say that while things have changed a lot, the basics of how it is
by dvirsky 13y ago
I'm "only" 39, but it's been 30 years since I've written my first line of code. And I have to say that while things have changed a lot, the basics of how it is to program and how you write code, are still the same. I find myself applying techniques I've learned back then, and even though I haven't written assembly since the 80s, the basic low-level understanding of how it all works still serves me to this day. The main difference is maybe how accessible good info is now. Back then each programming book was a treasure that was passed around.
I often wonder how much of that will stay the same 30 years from now, and I hope I'll still be hacking then. My bet is that we'll still have some versions of programming languages we know today, maybe even Linux running it. But it will be much more exciting if that won't be true :)
- petermurrayrust 13y agoI've been through 50 years of "programming" with a major change each decade. The key thing is to be in the company of young people. It's harder to learn new things because you have to unlearn earlier ones. My Java started by looking like FORTRAN, my Python now looks like Java. It's critically important to use good Open tools. Eclipse is wonderful. I could not work without JUnit and whenever I run into problems I use the discipline of using tests to define the problem. I have learnt to "love" Maven as I can't do without it. I could not live without Jenkins/Continuous Integration. The main problem is that all these add up, both in learning, installation and support. When I "retired" my website in cambridge gradually decayed and an upgrade to the OS meant Jenkins no longer worked. It's now back (thanks, Mark Williamson) and has restored impetus in the chemistry coding. You have to include time for exploration ("dead ends"). I jumped into javascript when it first appeared - it wasted huge amounts of time as every browsers "upgrade" was a disaster. I started Python and that was nearly as bad. Now , 10+ years on, they're robust and I shall relearn them. Probably be working alongside experts in a hackathon. I believe in code review and am happy for others to review mine!
- dvirsky 13y agoI find it that HackerNews itself, while it does waste a lot of my time reading and toying with such "dead ends", keeps me on the edge of things. I've started using Go because of posts and discussions here, and it's changed the way I do my work in the past year.
- vram22 13y ago>My bet is that we'll still have some versions of programming languages we know today, maybe even Linux running it. Unix is going strong for 41 years, says Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix Other than some IBM mainframe operating systems, this is probably one of the longest-lived ones still going.
- dvirsky 13y ago70 years of Unix, that would be something