Mjordan2nd

I was thinking about this the other day, and I realized it would be nearly impossible for me to learn to code without the internet. What I like to do is read a little bit out of a book to where I understand the basic concepts, start a project, and learn as I go via the internet. Books are great, but rarely do you see books which cover all the problems you come across, so I am a bit curious what the older members did when they ran across a problem they didn't have an answer for, or that they didn't know. Did you guys just have millions of books, did you turn to someone more experienced, did you figure it out by trial and error or what? Just curious.

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Ooble

I bought C for Dummies and read lots. I didn't start using the Internet for most of my coding problems and research until a few years back.

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DaWei

My first program was written in Fortran, on a form, submitted to a keypunch operator, and handed in to the computer center. I had a mentor who was teaching me to design filters. He told me a few things about writing the program: DO loops, output statements, stuff like that. Only later, after work, did I go by the library and get a book.

When I saw my first microprocessor, it was new. We didn't have an assembler, even, for the first two weeks. We put the opcodes in with a keypad. This was not too unusual, as I had programmed a minicomputer once where I had to punch the addresses and instructions for the boot sequence in with a bank of switches, entirely binary values. The microprocessor had no call stack -- we had to finagle subroutine calls. That, too, was not uncommon in the era. We had a spec book. There were no experts available to consult or learn from. The device had 128 bytes of internal ram (registers, actually) and 256 bytes of ROM. It clocked at 750Khz (yes, that's a K, not an M). It was a whiz, exciting as hell. I made a motor-controller with it, though it was not fast enough to deal with instantaneous load changes without introducing instabilities.

There was no internet, per se, at the time, though the foundations were beginning with the military and educational institutions.

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Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

grumpy

The brain capacity of older members is much larger than that of young internet weenies.

Seriously though .....

The concept of "library" existed a long time before the internet. The only difference was that the original notion of library was a largeish building with information stored in objects called books and magazines. If we wanted information, we had no choice but to go to the library, find what shelves hold the the material we needed (usually with the help of catalogs that were a set of cards filed in ways so they could be flipped through BY HAND), go to the shelf in question (which, in a larger library, could be quite a distance from a catalog), pick up the book or publication of interest, go to a desk to read it (taking notes if necessary), and then put the book back somewhere so the library staff could reshelve it. If necessary, it was possible to borrow a book from a library for a limited period, at no charge (with penalties in terms of fees or lost borrowing privileges if you damaged the books or held them for longer than the allowed loan period).

The only thing that IT and the internet has really changed is that you don't need to physically go to a library to find information you need --- you can search for information from home, and have it delivered to you. Or, if you go to the library, you go to a terminal, which you can use to both find the information you seek and actually get a copy (either electronically or by printing it out). There is still information in libraries (still in books) that has not been entered into computing systems so, sometimes, you will still need to go and find the actual (physical) book or journal. When you do that, you will actually be doing what we "older members" once did all the time because we had no other choice: physically walking through the halls of a library to the place where the book we want is stored, and then reading it.

One advantage that we older members have over younger people is that the effort to actually FIND and OBTAIN information was a lot greater than it is now. So we had to develop techniques to make that process more efficient, such as knowing how to keep track of where information is once we've found it and how to get it again without searching for it all over again. The process of finding and obtaining information is much simpler now (eg just go and do a google search with some keywords) so there is less need to develop study methods that actually involve organising information so it can be found again --- people now rely on technology to do that for them.

We older members don't necessarily know anything more than you do. It's just that we know the importance of keeping track of information we've used in the past, and how to keep track of it so we can find it again. In other words, our methods of keeping track of information we have and retrieving it are better than those of you younger members. For example, if using google, I keep track of useful information I find rather than relying on the information to be available again if I search for it. I rarely go back and do the same google search a second time (unless I'm looking for updates of information I found in a previous search).

As a professional researcher, the internet is actually among my LEAST FAVOURED research tools. Yes there is a lot of good information on the internet, but there is no quality control so there is a high amount of crap as well. One strong advantage of more traditional libraries (whether they do things online or require me to physically find and read books) is that they filter out lots of irrelevant information.

DaWei

Amen. One may write anything and be perceived as accurate, an expert, simply by being an "author."

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Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

Nebula

I bought "The absolute beginners guide to C" and I still regard it as the best programming book in the universe. I don't even code in C but I recommend it to anybody new to programming. It dosen't just teach you C it also just is a general book on the fundamentals of programmings. I highly recommend picking it up to you newbies.

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niteice

I found QBASIC on my mom's 386...shortly thereafter, the helpfile...I got a copy of VB6 For Dummies one year for Christmas...picked up C in late 2003 because I discovered id had released the Quake source code - being an average 12-year-old, I instantly went "COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!111", grabbed it, installed Visual C++ (6)...had NO clue what I was doing, over the next 2 years or so I taught myself C using mostly the quake/quake ii sources and the internet...so I don't think I ever formally learned C, just kinda picked it up from messing with the Quake and Quake II source code and having Google for reference, especially an online version of The C Book. :p

bl00dninja

i just bought a book through amazon on data structures published by bell labs in 1983. the whole thing uses examples in pascal. reason being that it was "widely known". most of the old guys were just math majors stumbling blindly into computing. my dad was a math major from rice university and he programmed in fortran and asm, now he programs algorithms in basic and lets the young guys translate it into C++. for a lot of the older guys they remove themselves from the problem at a pretty high level of abstraction to solve it. that is the basis of design..remove yourself from the box, let the implementation fall to second place in favor of solving the problem.

the first chapter in any data structures book tells you to remove youself from the implementation (because they assume you know how to do that) and just think about the problem.

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DaWei

Great post, blood. The farther removed the problem space (human problem) is from the solution space (stupid microprocessor), the more effective the answer is likely to be. Inefficient, yes, and slow, definitely, but effective in human terms.

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Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

ReggaetonKing

After not being able to understand C++, I switched to Java and searched in library for good Java books. I saw Java 2 in 21 Days. I read the first 70 pages and then found out it really sucked! I learned nothing from that garage of a book! Afterwards I searched on Amazon to buy a good book b/c I had a Visa Gift Card. I brought Java 2 for Dummies, Java, How to Program 4 ed., and Eclipse: Java's Developer Guide. And I was set even til now! I am still reading Java, How To Program. Its great but good a little to slow I think but I dont know if it's me or not, lol. BTW, I have tons of ebooks on programming but I didnt really read any of them yet. I found out about Java, how to program b/c I had downloaded it via L*mew*re. Shhhht! lol.

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