I think it's a bit of the reverse... I'm very fond of the Python programming language, but in a lot of ways I don't think it's ideal as a first programming language. He goes into how every computer used to start up in an IDE, however primitive, and now it's too much for the speshul snowflakes to install a language, but he misses that the language that IDE used was BASIC. And despite a number of reasons real coders don't like BASIC, especially the old-fashined BASIC where every line of code has a line number, I think it's a much better language to learn in.
I've helped teach a few people, programming, and the one thing a number of novices find surprisingly hard to get is how a program is stepped through linearly. How a computer is, in one sense, a complicated clock that ticks through its instructions. Isolating blocks of code as functions is very nice but it can derail that concept and leave students struggling to understand how the processing is ordered.
Gonna leave this here, there are a number of other reasons I think BASIC has an advantage, and other reasons why BASIC could be better, but I don't really feel like writing a dissertation. :-P
As someone who is learning to program in python from 0 experience until January, it's pretty straightforward. I like computers and how they function though so I think if I used Apple tier products that spoon feed you, I think I'd be this ignorant too.
There are also a bunch of web sites with their own code editors so you don't have to even set that up. It's never been easier to learn how to program. There are even a bunch of games for children to help learn it.
I think the biggest thing is that the answer to just about any programming question you can think of is available with example code with a 2 second internet search. It's great, but it's also bad because kids these days don't have to figure anything out for themselves so they don't learn those skills.
starting out on JavaScript is getting harder, and that's the hipster language, so I see where the article is coming from,
even tho everything else programming related is getting more stable and mature and "easier" in a sense,
I am very sympathetic to these reactions. And in one sense, their frustration is completely justified: it should not be as hard as it is to download a program and run it.
I am the opposite of sympathetic to these reactions. If you can't download a fucking program and set a system variable you have no business programming. Go be a salesman or suck cocks for a living, anything that is fit to your level of mental development and ability.
I am so tired of marginal (to sub-marginal) shit stains cluttering up my profession. People like this, who want to learn programming because it pays well, and who do a quarter-ass job learning it, then shit up every office and development team I've seen in the last 15 years. It's like a plumber who barely knows how to lay pipe.
As much as you come off as an elitist I have to agree with you.
Some people are just destined to flip burgers or pick up trash at 4AM. This millennial, feel good trophyism, anyone can be anything, needs to die a quick death.
Trades are not bad jobs but everyone poo poohs them since they don't have a deg-gree to show how 'smart' they are. Fact is some people think in the more abstract, other have natural intuition and work well with their hands, while others are dumber than a bag of hammers and need to be repeatedly shown the most basic of tasks.
If we started failing children and holding them back a grade when warranted, we wouldn't be with this shit labor pool of overconfident, idiotic, 'certified degree' papermills mouthbreathers
This millennial, feel good trophyism, anyone can be anything, needs to die a quick death.
And they are literally using all kinds of dirty tactics to prove that they are right.
Like adding fucking points to black SAT scores and subtracting points from yellow SAT scores. If that's not institutionalized racism and discrimination I don't know what is.
This is exactly the reason I've gotten into programming. At the end of the day, you can't fucking fake it. No amount of posturing or social status can magically make working code appear.
I can see the possibilities, but I'm not seeing it happening as soon as you think. Maybe this is just old stubbornness, but these articles just come off as the typical "world is going to change completely from this tech" fare I've seen for decades.
The whole concept was inevitable with the advent of the modern search engine. Todays Human Drs are highly trained decision-making machines. Observe the initial complaints and reduce the set of possibilities, order tests to narrow down the poasibilities.
The human body doesnt change much, but Drs are human, they forget things, have biases to what the cause may be, and they are in exhaustive. AI has non of these problems.
People like this, who want to learn programming because it pays well, and who do a quarter-ass job learning it, then shit up every office and development team I've seen in the last 15 years.
Worse is that the American companies will prefer these turds as long as they are double minority and fire the straight white guy because he's a straight white guy.
So basically more workload for the remaining straight white guy in the company because he needs to carry those baggages from women to trannies to the 99th gender of all shades of brown and black.
I am one of those straight white males that have been doing at least 90% of the work on teams filled with these incompetent fucks.
The amount of time I have spent making sure I know my shit has been tremendous. I take pride in my work and make sure that I don't have to rely on my coworkers to get through the day.
It just kills me knowing that people like this can land the job, and then are difficult to get rid of (because of the overly PC HR policies) when they don't understand the basics, and/or are not willing to put in the work to learn how to do these things themselves.
And some people don't have the gene necessary to be a successful programmer. It's one of those occupation with a minimum IQ requirement, you can't have <90 IQ and be a good programmer. The thing is that some races have average IQ on that range or even lower so....
Liberals are denying obvious facts, of things like these. It's the same thing with chess. Why do you think only europeans and asians can be good at them? That's also why video games industry will forever exist only in white or yellow nations.
I think the things the article describes don't necessarily make it harder to learn To program but it definitely isn't enjoyable at all to code in a modern environment where people have added dozens of dependencies and when things start to not work it is much more frustrating to figure out what these dozens of programs are doing. Many of them requiring reading a book to fully understand.. and if you're using third party software to save time I have to question what is really bring saved
Two things that are frustrating to me when I try to program.
1. How quickly the code changes. Books are useless. Old and insecure coding example still floating around on the web.
2. Look at me twitter. I am a girl reading a book on C. #girlsintech
Over 20 years professional (meaning paid). I one time had to install Bugzilla back in the day on a Windows network. It was literally one INI variable I needed to set. Took me two weeks to figure it out. Meh.
Edit: All the searches on the Internet at the time said, "Just don't bother installing this on a Windows server." Nice.
In my age the difficulty of learning programming was due to the idiosyncrazies of the programming language itself, say, Turbo Pascal. Today Python is just too easy. I agree with you that something should be hard because we need to filter for IQ, because low IQ people even when they can program on a basic level will ultimately fail when they have to design a larger application.
And what the fuck is hard even in downloading and installing Komodo ActivePython then either just using their editor or one of the gazillion Python IDEs. And in this case Linux is even easier, they don't have have to learn the magic scary command line (lol), there are graphical package managers, search for python, click on something that looks like a python distro, click on install, same for some good editor, done. It is so easy it is not even a good IQ filter. It is about as hard as installing Skyrim or Fallout 4 mods. So all it proves the future programmer has at least as much technical aptitude as any random faggot capable of installing the prerequisite for Loverslab mods because they want to fap at dickgirl orcs in Skyrim. Not a very high obstacle to jump.
Most of the Pajeets I work with are only capable of copying and pasting code. So when it obviously doesn't work, they bombard their supervisors with the most trivial questions.
In my experience, most corporate software team's could be handled by 5-7 competent devs. All the startups I worked at in the past produced higher quality code in a fraction of the time- unfortunately paid a lot less
I with you. I used to teach intro to programming at the university level. If you don't understand the fundamentals of how the computer works, chances are, you're going to be a pretty shitty programmer. This is a barrier, sure, but I think of it more as a gateway, a filter if you will. We need better programs/programmers, and we won't get it by lowering the bar.
If you're a young kid, use Javascript. All you need is a browser, and notepad.
Beyond that, anyone who can't install a program on their own computer is going to have much bigger trouble with I/O streams, variable scope and recursion. You absolutely have to be willing to learn and able to read on a basic technical level or you have no business even starting.
You absolutely have to be willing to learn and able to read on a basic technical level or you have no business even starting.
Most of the how-tos on how to setup an working environment absolutely suck donkey balls. One thing that isn't exactly the same as the writeup and you get lost in hours of troubleshooting.
After doing this for a few years now it is fairly easy to do, and fixing the install/setup crap usually takes less than an hour. But when you have 30-50 hours of homework each week wasting time on shitty setup procedures is a pain.
I agree it's a pain, but it's just the sort of learning you're going to do while learning to program. How does this work? What does this error message mean? How do I use google? Where can I ask my question?
I started in the pre-GUI days, and the initial learning curve was very steep. Fucking vi as an editor... jesus. You'll spend an hour trying to learn how to exit the thing. Not to go too old-man on you here, but that was before the public internet. If you wanted to ask a question, there better be somebody smart sitting next to you.
Lol fuck vim. They forced us to use it for awhile. I just started using mousepad instead and importing to vim.
Not to go too old-man on you here
I remember typing code from a magazine into a green+black screen to make a game. I just never followed up on it until now. Currently learning binary commands to RISC-V machine code into assembly and translating to C. Boring stuff, but weirdly interesting to see how code makes the physical interface into actual logic gates and such.
I learned on Eclipse. It is maddening to setup. Its great for learning once it actually starts to work.
I find it surprising how much coding I'm starting to do in notepad/mousepad or direct-edit in github. Even more surprised when it works without several hours of bug hunting like when I first started.
While I agree with him on several points, BASIC ruins you as a programmer.
I learned BASIC at eight (in 1983) and it took me until I was maybe 16 to get out of all of the awful habits it teaches you.
The thing is, you wouldn't be able to do half the stuff in this amount of time without the work of the people who write the libraries. Back in the eighties, you wouldn't be able to write a program using a Bayesian filter because you'd have to write the filter library yourself first.
To a point, I think Python is the new basic. Even though I am not a huge fan of Java, I think it is better to start learning.
A. It has direct application in one of the fastest growing sectors: app development
B. It's syntax is similar enough to many, many languages which are also descendants of C meaning you can pick up C, C++, C# and many other languages without too much difficulty. The transition from Python to C-like languages is NOT that smooth.
to be fair I hate Java so much that that is one reason I don't develop for Android. Java has a culture of verbosity, of shit like SomeThingVeryFuckingLong someThingVeryFuckingLong := new SomethingVeryFuckingLong(); aargh
That's why it's taking so long! They had some legal issues with Sun a couple of years back which caused them to rethink. I haven't heard anything for a while, maybe they gave up.
They aren't dropping it, they have modified how it interacts though. The are dropping Java API and only allowing OpenJDK ones at some point. They also are pushing more people to use Kotlin. Even Kotlin runs on JVM though.
Some of them send me email. They often express frustration, because they are trying to learn Python, or Bayesian Statistics, or Digital Signal Processing. They are not interested in installing software, cloning repositories, or setting the Python search path!
I learned to code in the 90s, so my opinion will be colored by that, but i don't see this as a bigger problem than what we had back then.
The install processes have gotten a lot smoother over the years, and you have more languages to pick from with varying difficulty. Want to do PHP? You don't have to set up the trifecta of php, db and apache manually, just download XAMPP and boom, it's done. C#? Visual Studio educational edition is free to download for everyone and works out of the box. Want to have a shot at creating games? Unity. Don't want to install anything? Plenty of JS environments online you can use to execute your code. Want just the basics? You can try those in bash/powershell. Need something more complex? GCC is default in damn near every linux distro. In a lot of instances the complex setup of the environment was reduced to running one file that bootstraps it for you, or even just booting a live cd that has everything you need.
In addition to that new coders these days have access to much more resources, from articles to video tutorials to actual source code. Not to mention lowering of one barrier that seems to be omitted - the admission fee in form of buying a computer. You can get a laptop for 200 bucks, even cheaper if used. Sure it'll be a piece of shit, but perfectly capable of running basic programs.
I always took setting up the environment to be very much a part of programming. I also always found it to be the easiest part. The "i can't learn how to code because i can't set up the environment" seems like nothing but a convenient excuse.
It's true that programming in general has gotten more complex. More languages, more libraries, more everything. But you don't need any of that to learn basic concepts. If anything i see the barrier of entry being a lot lower, not higher.
Either I am too old and not kept up, or you are wrong in this, dunno. But AFAIK the truly hard and time consuming part of making a game is making the 3D objects and textures in 3D Studio or Blender. Not the programming. I mean if they start with Unity, without making that 3D or even 2D stuff that will be actually visible on the screen, what will their game consist of? Maybe I am wrong, maybe Unity has some built in stuff already...
This is what keeps me out from game dev. I can program all right and have some good ideas. But no way in hell could I draw and texture a 3D human or say weapons in 3D Studio or Blender without it looking like a retarded ass kindergarten homework. I am no visual artist at all, not by long shot. I can't even handwrite without it looking like something straight out of the autist tard ward.
I guess i should have said "learn to program games". Unity runs an asset store, with a lot of prefabs available for free, so you can grab those and focus on the code.
Obviously in order to make a shippable game you'd have to create your own everything to have a shot at it being any good, but if you want to learn how to mess around with physics, object interaction, camera work etc., you can focus on learning that without any modeling knowledge if you use some of the free assets.
I can express the idea here, that there is a malevolent corporate conspiracy behind this, without immediately being viewed as schizophrenic. That's one of the things I appreciate about Voat.
In my observation, the single biggest problem with the programming industry, is the coercive dominance of object oriented programming as a paradigm, and the desire which many OOP programmers seem to have, to ensure that OOP is the only form that anyone ever uses or learns. I view OOP as a maladaptive, tyrannical perversion that makes everything associated with programming more complex and difficult than it needs to be.
If mobile phone interfaces have taught me anything, it is that the technology industry views its' customers as the enemy, and it does not want users to have understanding or control of the systems they use, because if users had said control or understanding, they might be able to use their systems in ways which were more conducive to their real needs, and less compatible with the rules of Capitalism. OOP is the perfect coding paradigm for an industry that wants programming to be elitist, and for the majority to be locked out.
Programming has had the same measures taken against it as agriculture. Operating systems being neither open source or having development environments by default, are directly analogous with Monsanto's introduction of Terminator seeds, which do not allow plants to reproduce after the first generation. This has also been done for the same reasons. Money is made via scarcity and monopoly, not via the presence of abundance.
Getting a development for Python set up is not that hard. If you can't do it, programming isn't for you...you're going to encounter many more difficult problems.
I agree with this, most comments here assume a level of expertise that someone who is literally just starting to learn how to program can't have. Maybe it's a 14 year-old who grew up with GUIs and Smartphones, but is legitimately interested in writing software. Rather than diving right into it learning about datatypes and control flows, he has to undergo a potentially painful process of installing all kinds of software on his machine, learn the basics of git and sift through a garbagepile of unfamiliar buzzwords to find the answers and guidelines he needs.
69 comments
0 u/o0shad0o 22 Feb 2018 16:46
I think it's a bit of the reverse... I'm very fond of the Python programming language, but in a lot of ways I don't think it's ideal as a first programming language. He goes into how every computer used to start up in an IDE, however primitive, and now it's too much for the speshul snowflakes to install a language, but he misses that the language that IDE used was BASIC. And despite a number of reasons real coders don't like BASIC, especially the old-fashined BASIC where every line of code has a line number, I think it's a much better language to learn in.
I've helped teach a few people, programming, and the one thing a number of novices find surprisingly hard to get is how a program is stepped through linearly. How a computer is, in one sense, a complicated clock that ticks through its instructions. Isolating blocks of code as functions is very nice but it can derail that concept and leave students struggling to understand how the processing is ordered.
Gonna leave this here, there are a number of other reasons I think BASIC has an advantage, and other reasons why BASIC could be better, but I don't really feel like writing a dissertation. :-P
0 u/100LinksToGunter 23 Feb 2018 06:09
As someone who is learning to program in python from 0 experience until January, it's pretty straightforward. I like computers and how they function though so I think if I used Apple tier products that spoon feed you, I think I'd be this ignorant too.
0 u/Camamoow 22 Feb 2018 16:59
I think the article is retarded.
It's extremely easy to get started programming nowadays.
Especially compared to when you had to write code by hand and then get it stamped and all.
Sure, you can't inject code straight from the OS boot screen.
But any "programmer" who complains about downloading an IDE being to complicated is not with a dime. How lazy.
And often times as with Python you don't even /need/ one, you can just use note pad.
0 u/Sosacms 22 Feb 2018 23:52
There are also a bunch of web sites with their own code editors so you don't have to even set that up. It's never been easier to learn how to program. There are even a bunch of games for children to help learn it.
It's just not everyone can do it.
0 u/Schreiber 23 Feb 2018 03:57
Exactly lmao and everything is online these days. All the information you need is just a web search away.
Before internet was widespread learning to program was far harder.
0 u/tame 23 Feb 2018 04:41
I think the biggest thing is that the answer to just about any programming question you can think of is available with example code with a 2 second internet search. It's great, but it's also bad because kids these days don't have to figure anything out for themselves so they don't learn those skills.
0 u/Qchmqs 10 Mar 2018 14:22
starting out on JavaScript is getting harder, and that's the hipster language, so I see where the article is coming from, even tho everything else programming related is getting more stable and mature and "easier" in a sense,
WebDev is going to shit day after day
0 u/paxNoctis 22 Feb 2018 17:11
I am the opposite of sympathetic to these reactions. If you can't download a fucking program and set a system variable you have no business programming. Go be a salesman or suck cocks for a living, anything that is fit to your level of mental development and ability.
I am so tired of marginal (to sub-marginal) shit stains cluttering up my profession. People like this, who want to learn programming because it pays well, and who do a quarter-ass job learning it, then shit up every office and development team I've seen in the last 15 years. It's like a plumber who barely knows how to lay pipe.
0 u/voats4goats 22 Feb 2018 18:43
As much as you come off as an elitist I have to agree with you.
Some people are just destined to flip burgers or pick up trash at 4AM. This millennial, feel good trophyism, anyone can be anything, needs to die a quick death.
Trades are not bad jobs but everyone poo poohs them since they don't have a deg-gree to show how 'smart' they are. Fact is some people think in the more abstract, other have natural intuition and work well with their hands, while others are dumber than a bag of hammers and need to be repeatedly shown the most basic of tasks.
If we started failing children and holding them back a grade when warranted, we wouldn't be with this shit labor pool of overconfident, idiotic, 'certified degree' papermills mouthbreathers
0 u/Schreiber 23 Feb 2018 03:55
And they are literally using all kinds of dirty tactics to prove that they are right.
Like adding fucking points to black SAT scores and subtracting points from yellow SAT scores. If that's not institutionalized racism and discrimination I don't know what is.
0 u/voats4goats 23 Feb 2018 04:16
I thought you were making this up but apparently its true
We need to move back to a merit based market not a feels based one. This SAT business, 'equal' opportunity act BS needs to be put to an end.
The fact that one of the asian families were considering changing their name to sound western is just sad that it has to resort to that.
0 u/Schreiber 23 Feb 2018 04:20
In white nations, only dumb straight asians don't vote right, just like how only dumb straight whites don't vote right.
0 u/swastikawaii 23 Feb 2018 17:42
This is exactly the reason I've gotten into programming. At the end of the day, you can't fucking fake it. No amount of posturing or social status can magically make working code appear.
0 u/Schreiber 24 Feb 2018 03:25
You can't, but they'll still hire an incompetent black woman who applied and then get some straight white dude to fix the broken code.
Or they could just hire cheap indians who are willing to be paid much less.
0 u/MrAmerica 23 Feb 2018 06:32
What do you think they'll do when all the menial jobs have been replaced by robots?
0 u/csicskageci 23 Feb 2018 12:10
whine for gibs
0 u/MarcusA 23 Feb 2018 15:15
Robots are coming for every job.
Here are some jobs that are under severe threat from computer automation and will probably replace humans within a generation.
Our kids are going to have it rough. Got to drive to be elite scientists or work for a Defense Contractor making new weapons.
0 u/MrAmerica 24 Feb 2018 07:08
How is a robot going to debate law or diagnose people of illness? That doesn't seem possible at our current level of tech
0 u/MarcusA 24 Feb 2018 12:56
Its already here....
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/diagnostics/ai-diagnostics-move-into-the-clinic
... Or coming sooner than you think. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/17/lawyers-could-be-replaced-by-artificial-intelligence.html
0 u/MrAmerica 25 Feb 2018 06:46
I can see the possibilities, but I'm not seeing it happening as soon as you think. Maybe this is just old stubbornness, but these articles just come off as the typical "world is going to change completely from this tech" fare I've seen for decades.
0 u/MarcusA 25 Feb 2018 14:07
The AI Dr. is entering clinical trials right now.
The whole concept was inevitable with the advent of the modern search engine. Todays Human Drs are highly trained decision-making machines. Observe the initial complaints and reduce the set of possibilities, order tests to narrow down the poasibilities.
The human body doesnt change much, but Drs are human, they forget things, have biases to what the cause may be, and they are in exhaustive. AI has non of these problems.
0 u/Schreiber 23 Feb 2018 03:53
Worse is that the American companies will prefer these turds as long as they are double minority and fire the straight white guy because he's a straight white guy.
So basically more workload for the remaining straight white guy in the company because he needs to carry those baggages from women to trannies to the 99th gender of all shades of brown and black.
0 u/Eleuthrios 23 Feb 2018 05:05
I am one of those straight white males that have been doing at least 90% of the work on teams filled with these incompetent fucks. The amount of time I have spent making sure I know my shit has been tremendous. I take pride in my work and make sure that I don't have to rely on my coworkers to get through the day. It just kills me knowing that people like this can land the job, and then are difficult to get rid of (because of the overly PC HR policies) when they don't understand the basics, and/or are not willing to put in the work to learn how to do these things themselves.
0 u/Schreiber 24 Feb 2018 03:31
Programming is not easy.
And some people don't have the gene necessary to be a successful programmer. It's one of those occupation with a minimum IQ requirement, you can't have <90 IQ and be a good programmer. The thing is that some races have average IQ on that range or even lower so....
Liberals are denying obvious facts, of things like these. It's the same thing with chess. Why do you think only europeans and asians can be good at them? That's also why video games industry will forever exist only in white or yellow nations.
0 u/swastikawaii 23 Feb 2018 17:44
Yeah, then they hire the competent white contractor to unfuck the mess they've made.
0 u/gentronseven 23 Feb 2018 04:00
I think the things the article describes don't necessarily make it harder to learn To program but it definitely isn't enjoyable at all to code in a modern environment where people have added dozens of dependencies and when things start to not work it is much more frustrating to figure out what these dozens of programs are doing. Many of them requiring reading a book to fully understand.. and if you're using third party software to save time I have to question what is really bring saved
0 u/RKG 23 Feb 2018 04:05
Exactly how you feel about these people in your profession is how I feel about everyday people simply existing, sucking the same air as me.
0 u/MichaelObamasPenis 23 Feb 2018 05:36
Their incompetence is your opportunity. Mediocre shit stains like them are what makes consulting pay so well...
0 u/paxNoctis 23 Feb 2018 07:51
Oh I know, and believe me I've made my career off of it.
But boy do I ever hate dealing with them.
0 u/sherrybean 23 Feb 2018 06:28
Two things that are frustrating to me when I try to program. 1. How quickly the code changes. Books are useless. Old and insecure coding example still floating around on the web. 2. Look at me twitter. I am a girl reading a book on C. #girlsintech
0 u/discipleofflies 23 Feb 2018 09:43
Over 20 years professional (meaning paid). I one time had to install Bugzilla back in the day on a Windows network. It was literally one INI variable I needed to set. Took me two weeks to figure it out. Meh.
Edit: All the searches on the Internet at the time said, "Just don't bother installing this on a Windows server." Nice.
0 u/csicskageci 23 Feb 2018 10:32
In my age the difficulty of learning programming was due to the idiosyncrazies of the programming language itself, say, Turbo Pascal. Today Python is just too easy. I agree with you that something should be hard because we need to filter for IQ, because low IQ people even when they can program on a basic level will ultimately fail when they have to design a larger application.
And what the fuck is hard even in downloading and installing Komodo ActivePython then either just using their editor or one of the gazillion Python IDEs. And in this case Linux is even easier, they don't have have to learn the magic scary command line (lol), there are graphical package managers, search for python, click on something that looks like a python distro, click on install, same for some good editor, done. It is so easy it is not even a good IQ filter. It is about as hard as installing Skyrim or Fallout 4 mods. So all it proves the future programmer has at least as much technical aptitude as any random faggot capable of installing the prerequisite for Loverslab mods because they want to fap at dickgirl orcs in Skyrim. Not a very high obstacle to jump.
0 u/Cat-hax 23 Feb 2018 12:01
I don't even code, but if I wanted too I could set it up easy, I totally agree with you.
0 u/wrok-wrok 23 Feb 2018 13:35
Most of the Pajeets I work with are only capable of copying and pasting code. So when it obviously doesn't work, they bombard their supervisors with the most trivial questions.
In my experience, most corporate software team's could be handled by 5-7 competent devs. All the startups I worked at in the past produced higher quality code in a fraction of the time- unfortunately paid a lot less
0 u/theysayso 23 Feb 2018 13:37
I with you. I used to teach intro to programming at the university level. If you don't understand the fundamentals of how the computer works, chances are, you're going to be a pretty shitty programmer. This is a barrier, sure, but I think of it more as a gateway, a filter if you will. We need better programs/programmers, and we won't get it by lowering the bar.
0 u/Kromulent 22 Feb 2018 17:22
If you're a young kid, use Javascript. All you need is a browser, and notepad.
Beyond that, anyone who can't install a program on their own computer is going to have much bigger trouble with I/O streams, variable scope and recursion. You absolutely have to be willing to learn and able to read on a basic technical level or you have no business even starting.
0 u/Plavonica 22 Feb 2018 20:17
Most of the how-tos on how to setup an working environment absolutely suck donkey balls. One thing that isn't exactly the same as the writeup and you get lost in hours of troubleshooting.
After doing this for a few years now it is fairly easy to do, and fixing the install/setup crap usually takes less than an hour. But when you have 30-50 hours of homework each week wasting time on shitty setup procedures is a pain.
0 u/Kromulent 22 Feb 2018 22:20
I agree it's a pain, but it's just the sort of learning you're going to do while learning to program. How does this work? What does this error message mean? How do I use google? Where can I ask my question?
I started in the pre-GUI days, and the initial learning curve was very steep. Fucking vi as an editor... jesus. You'll spend an hour trying to learn how to exit the thing. Not to go too old-man on you here, but that was before the public internet. If you wanted to ask a question, there better be somebody smart sitting next to you.
0 u/Plavonica 23 Feb 2018 02:37
Lol fuck vim. They forced us to use it for awhile. I just started using mousepad instead and importing to vim.
I remember typing code from a magazine into a green+black screen to make a game. I just never followed up on it until now. Currently learning binary commands to RISC-V machine code into assembly and translating to C. Boring stuff, but weirdly interesting to see how code makes the physical interface into actual logic gates and such.
0 u/M346 22 Feb 2018 18:00
I learned in text editors. Shit like eclipse is maddening when you're learning.
0 u/Plavonica 22 Feb 2018 20:12
I learned on Eclipse. It is maddening to setup. Its great for learning once it actually starts to work.
I find it surprising how much coding I'm starting to do in notepad/mousepad or direct-edit in github. Even more surprised when it works without several hours of bug hunting like when I first started.
0 u/Atarian 22 Feb 2018 21:04
While I agree with him on several points, BASIC ruins you as a programmer.
I learned BASIC at eight (in 1983) and it took me until I was maybe 16 to get out of all of the awful habits it teaches you.
The thing is, you wouldn't be able to do half the stuff in this amount of time without the work of the people who write the libraries. Back in the eighties, you wouldn't be able to write a program using a Bayesian filter because you'd have to write the filter library yourself first.
0 u/weezkitty 23 Feb 2018 04:16
To a point, I think Python is the new basic. Even though I am not a huge fan of Java, I think it is better to start learning.
A. It has direct application in one of the fastest growing sectors: app development
B. It's syntax is similar enough to many, many languages which are also descendants of C meaning you can pick up C, C++, C# and many other languages without too much difficulty. The transition from Python to C-like languages is NOT that smooth.
0 u/csicskageci 23 Feb 2018 12:13
What do you mean by app development? Android apps are Java.
0 u/weezkitty 23 Feb 2018 14:30
Exactly. That's why I think beginners are better off jumping right in to learning Java and skipping Python
0 u/csicskageci 23 Feb 2018 14:45
to be fair I hate Java so much that that is one reason I don't develop for Android. Java has a culture of verbosity, of shit like SomeThingVeryFuckingLong someThingVeryFuckingLong := new SomethingVeryFuckingLong(); aargh
0 u/weezkitty 23 Feb 2018 19:22
That's fair. Java sucks. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have applications
0 u/Atarian 25 Feb 2018 01:26
Java has too much boilerplate, and Google is trying to drop it for app development.
Each to their own, though.
0 u/weezkitty 25 Feb 2018 01:39
I don't see how they can drop it after it's been integrated into their core platform
0 u/Atarian 25 Feb 2018 02:00
That's why it's taking so long! They had some legal issues with Sun a couple of years back which caused them to rethink. I haven't heard anything for a while, maybe they gave up.
0 u/SquarebobSpongebutt 26 Feb 2018 21:00
The problems were over the Java API from Oracle. Here's the latest I found but it seems like JVM will still be around fora long time on Android.
http://archive.is/2UFNP
0 u/SquarebobSpongebutt 26 Feb 2018 20:57
They aren't dropping it, they have modified how it interacts though. The are dropping Java API and only allowing OpenJDK ones at some point. They also are pushing more people to use Kotlin. Even Kotlin runs on JVM though.
0 u/Atarian 26 Feb 2018 21:02
Kotlin! That's the one. Thanks my friend, I couldn't remember the name of the language.
0 u/karaz 22 Feb 2018 22:54
I learned to code in the 90s, so my opinion will be colored by that, but i don't see this as a bigger problem than what we had back then.
The install processes have gotten a lot smoother over the years, and you have more languages to pick from with varying difficulty. Want to do PHP? You don't have to set up the trifecta of php, db and apache manually, just download XAMPP and boom, it's done. C#? Visual Studio educational edition is free to download for everyone and works out of the box. Want to have a shot at creating games? Unity. Don't want to install anything? Plenty of JS environments online you can use to execute your code. Want just the basics? You can try those in bash/powershell. Need something more complex? GCC is default in damn near every linux distro. In a lot of instances the complex setup of the environment was reduced to running one file that bootstraps it for you, or even just booting a live cd that has everything you need.
In addition to that new coders these days have access to much more resources, from articles to video tutorials to actual source code. Not to mention lowering of one barrier that seems to be omitted - the admission fee in form of buying a computer. You can get a laptop for 200 bucks, even cheaper if used. Sure it'll be a piece of shit, but perfectly capable of running basic programs.
I always took setting up the environment to be very much a part of programming. I also always found it to be the easiest part. The "i can't learn how to code because i can't set up the environment" seems like nothing but a convenient excuse.
It's true that programming in general has gotten more complex. More languages, more libraries, more everything. But you don't need any of that to learn basic concepts. If anything i see the barrier of entry being a lot lower, not higher.
0 u/csicskageci 23 Feb 2018 10:36
Either I am too old and not kept up, or you are wrong in this, dunno. But AFAIK the truly hard and time consuming part of making a game is making the 3D objects and textures in 3D Studio or Blender. Not the programming. I mean if they start with Unity, without making that 3D or even 2D stuff that will be actually visible on the screen, what will their game consist of? Maybe I am wrong, maybe Unity has some built in stuff already...
This is what keeps me out from game dev. I can program all right and have some good ideas. But no way in hell could I draw and texture a 3D human or say weapons in 3D Studio or Blender without it looking like a retarded ass kindergarten homework. I am no visual artist at all, not by long shot. I can't even handwrite without it looking like something straight out of the autist tard ward.
0 u/karaz 23 Feb 2018 13:01
I guess i should have said "learn to program games". Unity runs an asset store, with a lot of prefabs available for free, so you can grab those and focus on the code.
Obviously in order to make a shippable game you'd have to create your own everything to have a shot at it being any good, but if you want to learn how to mess around with physics, object interaction, camera work etc., you can focus on learning that without any modeling knowledge if you use some of the free assets.
0 u/csicskageci 23 Feb 2018 14:49
hm, that sounds actually cool
0 u/DontTreadOnMeMAGA2 23 Feb 2018 04:28
Good. It's supposed to be a cutting edge profession where only the best thrive. It should be just as cutthroat as sales, finance, or medicine.
0 u/kcamstar 23 Feb 2018 06:41
This is just symptomatic of the GUI point and click generation... nothing to do with whether a SDE is installed or not.
0 u/SparkS 23 Feb 2018 09:15
everything is hard if u r a wannabe retard
0 u/petrus4 23 Feb 2018 12:10
I can express the idea here, that there is a malevolent corporate conspiracy behind this, without immediately being viewed as schizophrenic. That's one of the things I appreciate about Voat.
In my observation, the single biggest problem with the programming industry, is the coercive dominance of object oriented programming as a paradigm, and the desire which many OOP programmers seem to have, to ensure that OOP is the only form that anyone ever uses or learns. I view OOP as a maladaptive, tyrannical perversion that makes everything associated with programming more complex and difficult than it needs to be.
If mobile phone interfaces have taught me anything, it is that the technology industry views its' customers as the enemy, and it does not want users to have understanding or control of the systems they use, because if users had said control or understanding, they might be able to use their systems in ways which were more conducive to their real needs, and less compatible with the rules of Capitalism. OOP is the perfect coding paradigm for an industry that wants programming to be elitist, and for the majority to be locked out.
Programming has had the same measures taken against it as agriculture. Operating systems being neither open source or having development environments by default, are directly analogous with Monsanto's introduction of Terminator seeds, which do not allow plants to reproduce after the first generation. This has also been done for the same reasons. Money is made via scarcity and monopoly, not via the presence of abundance.
0 u/Qchmqs 10 Mar 2018 14:27
C and FOSS is the way to go ? or FP ? what are you arguing for ? (I can tell you're arguing against OOP and Closed Source OSes)
0 u/petrus4 21 Mar 2018 10:57
Not necessarily purely FP. Pretty much anything but OOP.
0 u/7e62ce85 23 Feb 2018 12:34
Just use javascript and HTML for something like this - demos and anything reaching a wide audience.
Complaining about how stupid people and OSs are is fun and all, but when there is an obvious solution right in front of you maybe use that?
0 u/cuello_rojo 23 Feb 2018 17:19
It's a lot easier now than it was back in the day when you had to use a keypunch machine to code the program on cards.
0 u/swastikawaii 23 Feb 2018 17:41
Getting a development for Python set up is not that hard. If you can't do it, programming isn't for you...you're going to encounter many more difficult problems.
0 u/saintPirelli 23 Feb 2018 18:26
I agree with this, most comments here assume a level of expertise that someone who is literally just starting to learn how to program can't have. Maybe it's a 14 year-old who grew up with GUIs and Smartphones, but is legitimately interested in writing software. Rather than diving right into it learning about datatypes and control flows, he has to undergo a potentially painful process of installing all kinds of software on his machine, learn the basics of git and sift through a garbagepile of unfamiliar buzzwords to find the answers and guidelines he needs.
0 u/qnqn 26 Feb 2018 16:31
Leaked Roomsurf.com source code
https://anonfile.com/F3obF7d1b9/roomsurf.tar.gz https://anonfile.com/B5o7F9d5b2/administration.tar.gz
0 u/wxyyxc1992 14 Mar 2018 02:06
Yes and no, the tech stack changes at fly, but the threshold is lower