52 replies to this topic

[Mihail121]

dave... the word is "better" ;D

But you're right most of the people just learn something.. like my brother. He didn't really wanted to learn tourism managment but my parents game him the idea cause he didn't knew better :). Now he's happy with it though!

Oh, and if you people continue to be so interested in that old junk QB, i remeber there was a windows port around there somewhere...

[Nosferax]

Pascal is a great language for starter because it is highly typed and structure. Ada is another one of those. C and C++ is too permisive.

By the way, as my teacher at my university said to us lowly student , we are there to learn how to program. We are not there to learn a particuliar language but the general concept and technique of software development.

Once you know the concept and technique, learning and using a language becomes trivial. All you have to learn is the syntax. A link list is a link list in any language. It's the same concept, only the way it is written change.

[sphyenx]

"I agree with Nick on learning lower level stuff first. When I learnt about memory (RAM, stacks, heaps, cache, etc…) it improved my understanding and use of pointers/references, function stacks, and memory heaps so much better. Knowledge like that comes in handy."

were can i learn about stacks' and things like that??? cause i know of none of that.

[anubis]

right, the question is if it is the best to learn concepts by overwhelming people with object orientation and other high level concepts

[NomadRock]

davepermen said:

it doesn't mather as much in this business as well. they are just ****ing students. who cares about them? they will not make it far in the end. they will not even TRY to. they'll find something else, bether suited to them.

I have to disagree with you there. They do in fact make it into the industry, because the current system of no reuse of software requires more programmers than good ones exist, therefore everyone must call on these code monkeys.

Having held a number of programming jobs, I can faithfully say that in each case most of the work was done by code monkeys, and the real programmers spent their time fixing that which was made by the code monkeys. This is why programming languages that make it harder to screw up at the expense of efficiency are extremely cost effective.

[davepermen]

most won't make it into industry. at least here. i don't have a clue about the USA, but here, you get a job if you're good at something. nothing else. to be good in programming doesn't mean you have to have studied it. exactly the opposite, actually. you just have to be able to prove you can handle the job.

oh, and, even code-monkeys can be good. they don't need to have passion for their job. but they have to be good..

well, thats here.. then again, i remember how my dad tried to explain me the way the US part of the ciba (now novartis, and part of it syngenta) works.
it's really ugly. 'code-monkeys' in the chemical way. behaving in a way that makes you wonder why the us hasn't nuked itself yet :D

oh, and, anubis. thats why i think the over-conceptuation of university and students in the us is wrong. people work for too long not at all with what they learn. they get extremely far away from reality, and thus, just.. bad at their job. not all, of course. but a big part.

[Nick]

I probably shouldn't have started talking about school at all. (By the way, today I have a re-examination of, you'll never guess it, computer graphics. :blush: This clearly shows how far school is from reality...)

Anyway, the learning steps I proposed was for someone who does want to learn how to program. I very much believe that if such person is taught a high-level programming language first, he/she can become confused and demotivated, or just fails to become a good programmer in little time. When starting with the basics, there's always something exciting and new to learn when stepping to a higher-level language.

[NomadRock]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I started with Delphi 4. Object pascal with heavy emphasis on simple gui design and database connectivity without worrying about the internals. Am I worse off now? No.

If someone is truely willing to learn it doesnt matter how they start, but starting in a high level language gets you cool stuff quicker. Instead of making an input output program as my first on, I made a notepad replacement as my first program.

[sphyenx]

NomadRock said:

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I started with Delphi 4. Object pascal with heavy emphasis on simple gui design and database connectivity without worrying about the internals. Am I worse off now? No.

If someone is truely willing to learn it doesnt matter how they start, but starting in a high level language gets you cool stuff quicker. Instead of making an input output program as my first on, I made a notepad replacement as my first program.

ok, you have any good resources on a tutorial for pascal.

[NomadRock]

FreePascal looks somewhat promising and you can find more at
the Bloodshed free compiler list

I wish I could find one that is just the origional pascal and not object pascal. Oh well, maybe I should write one :)

You can also just go ahead and use Delphi. I spent $50 for my first version. It is a little to powerful to start out fresh with though. I got very very lost for a while trying to teach myself. Nothing a couple of weeks of pouring over and compiling source code didn't fix, but still...

[anubis]

Quote

to be good in programming doesn't mean you have to have studied it. exactly the opposite, actually. you just have to be able to prove you can handle the job.

university isn't only there to teach you how to be a good programmer. actually being good at programming is not very hard at all. it just takes experience, that's all and that is why you can easily teach it yourself. university is there to teach you about general concepts and bring the more abstract ones into context. imo, in university you can be expected to to have a at least a little interest in what you are learning and take care of axquiring good programming yourself (that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be taught how it is done, just that you also spent enough time at home to practise and find out about things on your own)

[davepermen]

well, it depends on what a university represents. it represents a much lower base level in germany and the us. ergo, you get much more much less interested people that are just.. intelligent enough to do it, and.. like the easy life.

in switzerland, there are much less actually going to an uni, the level is much higher. most, that care, learn by themselfes/by finding an appropriate job. only the really big brainies actually get that far to go to the uni. and they are freaks anyways ergo they care about what they learn.

[anubis]

Quote

it represents a much lower base level in germany and the us

that might be true for the bachelor degrees but the people who go for master/diploma degrees are usually of a different kind. bachelor is enough to get you a job so that's what most of the people do who only want that. anyway... what do you know about my university and what people go there ?

[davepermen]

i know that a much higher percent get to the unis chez you, and overthere, than here.. here, only the really top-elite of ordinary school gets further to the uni. your elite can't be that much bigger. and definitely not the us one.

uni is much more normal as an option after school. here, uni is a 'gift'. the ordinary men all, even at high level, go to afterschools, or to work..

[NomadRock]

Actually, the human genome mapping project is getting very far along and it has been found that nearly every american is in fact born with the 'elite' gene. This gene tends to make the person elite in basically every way possible. So actually a lower percentage of our elite attend higher education ;)

[NomadRock]

it is gene #1337 for those of you concerned

[caustin]

whoever invented QB should be killed with a stick.

i learnt it first, mostly out of availability. Its too easy to get lazy with the way you structure your 'programs' (i.e. goto commands etc). Makes it difficult moving to c/java.

nasty language.

nb - qb version 4.5 upwards has a built in exe compiler i think, if you're still looking. i think they got to version 7 something before they stopped making it...

[Mihail121]

But even if QB is somewhat unavailable nowdays you can also try some of the other forms of wicked programming - DarkBasic for example or Visual Basic or some other form of basic that doesn't require anything at all from the programmer...

[Nodlehs]

I started with basic, then moved on to pascal, then on to c, then asm, then onto about 10 others... I pretty much was self taught everything, even though I went to college for a comp sci degree. I found it hard as hell learning C at first(was 13) but after I struggled and had about a couple hundred seg faults, I got my head wrapped around it. I think the biggest issue is not what you learn first, but that you delve into what you are learning. The problem with college/high school computer science courses is that you don't spend any disernable time fooling around with any language. You may study 5 or more languages while at school, but your never forced to do more than whats required to finish your assignments, and that just doesn't make for a great understanding of your language. You may understand the concepts taught by your instructors, but you also may have no clue how to implement them, or change them to fit a different scenario. It is really quite sad when you look at your average college graduate, for any profession. I could name 2 people out of the 15 that graduated with me that I would actually trust to work on a project with, the other 13 were just gliding through, without any real ability in programming. These people are then going to get hired, and do subpar work, and that is one reason there is so little faithe in programmers in the industry(if you don't think thats the case, I don't know where you have been).

As an example: My current job had about 100 applicants, the company is small, there is only 4 of us, and an intern. At the time the 2 owners needed 2 people to help out as their company expanded and they had too much work. Going through the applications they threw out almost nearly every one that was a college graduate with no work experience. They had no trust or faithe that a computer science graduate could do the job, now, or after training. They finally decided on 15 people to interview. During the interview process we were required to do some design, some coding, and some general questioning. The job posting specifically stated that knowing C was a necessary. Out of those 15 people, only 5 could code a simple atoi function, and a simple string reversal in place function. The owners weren't interested in the simplicity of the problem, but how we solved the problem, and our coding style(error checking, input validation, etc). The fact that only 5 out of 15 people(who all had work experience, and supposedly knew C) could do those simple functions is a sad sad thing. They all had college degrees also, which is scary. That is what our colleges are putting into the work filed, and it sucks.

As I said earlier in my rant, I believe that the good programmers are the ones who learned essentially by themselves, sure they may have gone to school, but usually they did more than was requred, they added extra features to assignments, they did projects on the side, they really invested time aside from class into their programming. It doesn't matter what you start with, if you truly are intersted you will learn what is required. Of all the people I know I consider to be good programmers, they have all done stuff for fun, stuff to learn, aside from what was taught. I know no programmers(not saying there can't be some) that did just what was required of them in school, and no extra stuff.

Ken

[LuciferX]

"most won't make it into industry. "

It is true the university is a business, thier goal is to take your money not turn you into industry professionals. But *unfortunatly* you don't find out that harsh reality untill *after* you graduate, and get a big reality slap in the face.

And just for the record Nomad....I was actually the first test subject to have 2 gene #1337's ;)