Re:Ask HN: Late-bloomer engineers, when and how did you disc...
by openlowcode on Thursday April 23, 2020 @02:07AM
(#22953257)
Hi,
I am 43. I am probably atypical for my age range, as most friends would have started with an Atari, Amiga or Amstrad computer, and I had a PC at home from maybe 1984. I always complained that I had crappy games as a result, but for the rest, the PC was fine. I still remember text only Microsoft word.
I started programming in Microsoft BASICA, getting lost in GOTO hell. Then, Pascal, and, at age 13, I put all my savings in buying a C compiler (costed 100€ or so), and also getting a graphical library through shareware (remember ordering the floppy disks by mail).
At university, I moved from C to java, and I more or less stayed there as java is good enough / common for my trade in entreprise IT. I also do not like scripting languages, and prefer compiled languages (faster, errors found earlier).
I am 43. I am probably atypical for my age range, as most friends would have started with an Atari, Amiga or Amstrad computer, and I had a PC at home from maybe 1984. I always complained that I had crappy games as a result, but for the rest, the PC was fine. I still remember text only Microsoft word.
I started programming in Microsoft BASICA, getting lost in GOTO hell. Then, Pascal, and, at age 13, I put all my savings in buying a C compiler (costed 100€ or so), and also getting a graphical library through shareware (remember ordering the floppy disks by mail).
At university, I moved from C to java, and I more or less stayed there as java is good enough / common for my trade in entreprise IT. I also do not like scripting languages, and prefer compiled languages (faster, errors found earlier).