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Python programming

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  Python programming ngangsia akumbo <ngangsia@gmail.com> - 2014-02-11 16:21 -0800
    Re: Python programming Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-02-12 12:17 +1100
    Re: Python programming Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2014-02-11 21:06 -0500
    Re: Python programming Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-02-11 18:46 -0800
    Re: Python programming Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-02-11 22:02 -0500
      Re: Python programming Gene Heskett <gheskett@wdtv.com> - 2014-02-11 23:14 -0500
      Re: Python programming Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-02-12 13:41 +0000
      Re: Python programming Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2014-02-12 21:00 -0500
        Re: Python programming Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2014-02-13 02:57 +0000
          Re: Python programming Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-02-12 22:04 -0500
            Re: Python programming Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-02-13 14:13 +1100
              Re: Python programming Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2014-02-13 15:13 +0000
            Re: Python programming William Ray Wing <wrw@mac.com> - 2014-02-12 22:56 -0500
              Re: Python programming Dan Sommers <dan@tombstonezero.net> - 2014-02-13 05:18 +0000
            Re: Python programming Larry Martell <larry.martell@gmail.com> - 2014-02-13 03:30 -0500
    Re: Python programming Asdrúbal Iván Suárez <asdrubalivan.listas@gmail.com> - 2014-02-11 20:01 -0430
    Re: Python programming Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2014-02-12 15:09 +1100
    Re: Python programming Larry Martell <larry.martell@gmail.com> - 2014-02-12 08:55 -0500
      Re: Python programming Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-02-12 09:13 -0500
        Re: Python programming Larry Martell <larry.martell@gmail.com> - 2014-02-12 11:43 -0500
        Re: Python programming Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2014-02-12 21:13 -0500
    Re: Python programming Tim Delaney <timothy.c.delaney@gmail.com> - 2014-02-13 08:02 +1100
    Re: Python programming Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-02-13 08:34 +1100
    Re: Python programming Tim Delaney <timothy.c.delaney@gmail.com> - 2014-02-13 09:57 +1100
    Re: Python programming Neil Cerutti <neilc@norwich.edu> - 2014-02-13 15:30 +0000
      Re: Python programming ngangsia akumbo <ngangsia@gmail.com> - 2014-02-14 12:29 -0800

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#66138

On Wed, 12 Feb 2014 11:43:09 -0500, Larry Martell <larry.martell@gmail.com>
declaimed the following:

>
>I think it was a Xerox Sigma:
>

	WHERE?!!!

	The only places I know of that had Sigma's were NASA, Missile Systems
Division of Lockheed Missiles & Space (Sunnyvale, 1981 -- they were
drafting a set of requirements to replace the Sigma. I looked at those
requirement and concluded there was only one viable alternative -- a
Honeywell DPS-8 running CP/6; the requirements specified the CP/V
In/Out/Update/Scratch file modes, and I've never seen any other system that
had Update/Scratch*... Also specified the equivalent of consecutive, keyed,
and random file organization), McDonnell-Douglas "McAuto", and... Wayne
State, Hope College, and Grand Valley (all three in Michigan... GV was
mine)


*	For the bystanders: Update and Scratch maintained separate read/write
file positions. An Update file required one to read one or more records
before writing, the write position trailed the read position. Scratch was
the opposite; one wrote data and then could read it back later -- the write
position had to be ahead of the read position.

	Oh,  consecutive was equivalent to a UNIX stream file; no structure.
Keyed was ISAM (and even the text editor used this -- the line numbers were
ISAM keys). Random... Was a preallocated /contiguous/ block of disk -- the
OS did nothing for structure.
-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/

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#66085

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On 13 February 2014 00:55, Larry Martell <larry.martell@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 7:21 PM, ngangsia akumbo <ngangsia@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Please i have a silly question to ask.
> >
> > How long did it take you to learn how to write programs?
>
> My entire life.
>
> I started in 1975 when I was 16 - taught myself BASIC and wrote a very
> crude downhill skiing game.


OK - it's degenerated into one of these threads - I'm going to participate.

I received a copy of "The Beginners Computer Handbook: Understanding &
programming the micro" (Judy Tatchell and Bill Bennet, edited by Lisa Watts
- ISBN 0860206947) for Christmas of 1985 (I think - I would have been 11
years old). As you may be able to tell from that detail, I have it sitting
in front of me right now - other books have come and gone, but I've kept
that one with me. It appears to have been published elsewhere under a
slightly different name with a very different (and much more boring) cover
- I can't find any links to my edition.

My school had a couple of Apple IIe and IIc machines, so I started by
entering the programs in the book. Then I started modifying them. Then I
started writing my own programs from scratch.

A couple of years later my dad had been asked to teach a programming class
and was trying to teach himself Pascal. We had a Mac 512K he was using.
He'd been struggling with it for a few months and getting nowhere. One
weekend I picked up his Pascal manual + a 68K assembler Mac ROM guide,
combined the two and by the end of the weekend had a semi-working graphical
paint program.

A few years after that I went to university (comp sci); blitzed my
computer-related classes; scraped by in my non-computer-related classes;
did some programming work along the way; was recommended to a job by a
lecturer half-way through my third year of uni; spent the next 4 years
working while (slowly) finishing my degree; eventually found my way into an
organisation which treated software development as a discipline and a
craft, stayed there for 10 years learning how to be more than just a
programmer; came out the other end a senior developer/technical lead and
effective communicator.

And that's how I learned to program.

Tim Delaney

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#66094

On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 8:02 AM, Tim Delaney
<timothy.c.delaney@gmail.com> wrote:
> I received a copy of "The Beginners Computer Handbook: Understanding &
> programming the micro" (Judy Tatchell and Bill Bennet, edited by Lisa Watts
> - ISBN 0860206947) for Christmas of 1985 (I think - I would have been 11
> years old). As you may be able to tell from that detail, I have it sitting
> in front of me right now - other books have come and gone, but I've kept
> that one with me. It appears to have been published elsewhere under a
> slightly different name with a very different (and much more boring) cover -
> I can't find any links to my edition.

Heh. I wonder if I could still find back the copy of "Bible BASIC"
that I learned from.

And yes, I learned BASIC first. Moved on from there to 8086 assembly
language, using DEBUG.EXE as my assembler, and proceeded through a
variety of setups with crazy restrictions on them. Let's see... I
wrote non-TSR interrupt handlers that executed a subprocess and
cleaned up when that process finished; used BASIC with CALL ABSOLUTE
to handle a mouse pointer; got onto OS/2 but didn't have a C compiler,
ergo wrote OS/2 code in Pascal; wanted to write a device driver but
lacked both C compiler and assembler, ergo wrote a two-pass assembler
in REXX that piped everything through DEBUG.EXE running in a virtual
86 session; couldn't get hold of a copy of the no-longer-supported
VX-REXX, and so wielded a demo version with a weird system of creating
executables... you know, getting onto a Linux system with a real
toolchain was quite the luxury. (Okay, okay, I did have some slightly
more normal experiences in amongst the weird ones. But it sounds more
insane to pretend that the above was how _all_ my programming went.)

ChrisA

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#66112

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On 13 February 2014 08:02, Tim Delaney <timothy.c.delaney@gmail.com> wrote:

> I received a copy of "The Beginners Computer Handbook: Understanding &
> programming the micro" (Judy Tatchell and Bill Bennet, edited by Lisa Watts
> - ISBN 0860206947)
>

I should have noted that the examples were all BASIC (with details for how
to modify for various BASIC implementations on various platforms).

Tim Delaney

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#66186

On 2014-02-12, Tim Delaney <timothy.c.delaney@gmail.com> wrote:
> OK - it's degenerated into one of these threads - I'm going to
> participate.

Me, too!

I wrote lots of programs, strictly for fun, on every personal
computer I got my hands on. Toward the end of the 80's personal
computer's stopped coming equipped with programming environments,
and I stopped programming.

I eventually learned  some computing theory in college where they
taught C and the rudiments of C++.

Thanks to the open-source movement we've returned to the days
when anybody can program for zero cash. You can program well
enough to amuse yourself with very little effort indeed.

To get from there to being able to write programs to do useful
things for yourself is a lot harder, but this is the niche that
Python fills excellent well. If this is what you want to do,
Python is a good way to go.

That's still just the beginning, but it's a pretty good place.

-- 
Neil Cerutti

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#66323

wow wow

Thanks for the contutions

Thanks guys, 
many more are welcome

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