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A comment on I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I know how to program. Parent comment

Re:I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I k... by burgerbrain on Friday February 04, 2011 @01:00PM (#2180392)
I got into programming partly because I didn't have a lot of money. My parents were smart enough to recognize that having at least one computer in the household was incredibly important, but that one computer happened to be a good decade out of date. One of those "I saw this at a yardsale and picked it up for $50s" deals", the type of machine I use as personal mailservers/spaceheaters these days... I sure couldn't game on it, so besides using it for word processing and research, I learned how to program on it. I grew sick of win95, and nothing else would run on it, so I learned how to put linux on it and use that.

Anyway, my point is this: My current machine I do most of my work on has 64 GB of ram and 32 cores, but you absolutely can get into computing with the kind of money you can earn on a weekend mowing lawns.

(And yes, I was born before 1990. Not everyone in college knew how to program already, but all the kids who made it through the weedout courses sure did...)

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Re:I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I k... by huertanix on Friday February 04, 2011 @02:14PM (#2180705)
I lived in BFE, Idaho until college and didn't have access to a PC most of my time there, and unfortunately, I had access to zero programmers. My introduction to programming concepts was made through trying to figure out and modify crappy JavaScript snippets on websites in 1999 over a 33.6K connection.

When I entered college, I was surprised that most of my classmates have had broadband connections and better computers for years, but never bothered to do much more than receive email with them.

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Re:I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I k... by hessenwolf on Friday February 04, 2011 @01:57PM (#2180633)
Well, good stuff. :) I didn't have access to a pc before uni (1998); I just ate the material up and practically memorised Deitel & Deitel's c++. I worked for so little cash programming through summer I suffered from malnutrition. I don't even know if I was natural - I just banged my head against the wall until it fell down. It really is rather rewarding :D.
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