In 1988 after a back injury knocked me out of construction work, I started with 16bit intel assembly language on an old XT. I was guided by listings from Byte and Dr. Dobbs magazine and the fine folks on FidoNet and RIME/Relaynet. I eventually learned C, tried qbasic and turbo pascal and eventually settled on C++.
I was initially driven by the desire to write a game similar to the first NES Zelda game, but for multiple people. I got it somewhat working so 2 computers could play with stick figures over a serial or parallel cable. My lack or art skills torpedoed it, but... It was what kept the fire burning for almost 2 years.
I eventually learned Perl (to help out a friend of a friend with his business web site), Python (again for a FoaF), Rexx, shell scripting, awk and a few others that coincided with a move to Linux in the late 90s when OS/2 died. The draw of games kept me in Windows machines from 3.0 to Win7...
If not for Joseph Carnage, Jerry Coffin, Bob Stout, Doug Azzarito and the others on the BBSs, I would not be what I am today. Almost all gave their time selflessly in helping me learn to think and function as a professional programmer.
25ish years later, I'm still doing things in Python and C++ and trying to wrap my head around Haskell along with various and sundry things that fall in my lap and need doing. :)
In 1988 after a back injury knocked me out of construction work, I started with 16bit intel assembly language on an old XT. I was guided by listings from Byte and Dr. Dobbs magazine and the fine folks on FidoNet and RIME/Relaynet. I eventually learned C, tried qbasic and turbo pascal and eventually settled on C++.
I was initially driven by the desire to write a game similar to the first NES Zelda game, but for multiple people. I got it somewhat working so 2 computers could play with stick figures over a serial or parallel cable. My lack or art skills torpedoed it, but... It was what kept the fire burning for almost 2 years.
I eventually learned Perl (to help out a friend of a friend with his business web site), Python (again for a FoaF), Rexx, shell scripting, awk and a few others that coincided with a move to Linux in the late 90s when OS/2 died. The draw of games kept me in Windows machines from 3.0 to Win7...
If not for Joseph Carnage, Jerry Coffin, Bob Stout, Doug Azzarito and the others on the BBSs, I would not be what I am today. Almost all gave their time selflessly in helping me learn to think and function as a professional programmer.
25ish years later, I'm still doing things in Python and C++ and trying to wrap my head around Haskell along with various and sundry things that fall in my lap and need doing. :)