Programming Story Thread

Programming Story Thread
>How I got into coding
>Freshmen in high school
>Want to get an art degree (Pls don't roast)
>After attending some art classes, realized I fucking hate art.
>High school offering coding classes
>Enter programming class so I can make my own hacks for games.
>Wait, coding is actually pretty fun.
>Completely forget about my original intention of joining.
>This shit is interesting and fun as hell.
>Thirsty for more coding classes after freshmen year.
>Sophomore year didn't have enough students for advanced coding class (Everybody fucking hated coding in my school.)
>Junior year, finally got enough kids for a C++ class.
>Whooped my ass real good, but really only made my passion to learn programming stronger.
>Decide to major in Comp Sci
>mfw i only wanted to learn coding so I can hack games, but it became my career path.

Is that Notepad++ you degenerate?

sorry we only care about traps not some shitty life story

> be me around 8yo
> electronic things make sound and picture, funny
> dad is teacher, gets computer from school (ZX81)
> me type on keyboard
> "syntax error"
> get coding book
> type random lines from random program listings
> no "syntax error"
> become engineer

>Want to get an art degree (Pls don't roast)
you don't like art?

It's some shitty stock photo I found online.

I don't hate art as much, but I would absolutely hate drawing art as a job. I can't force myself to draw or care enough to put quality into what I'm drawing, if I don't care about it. So I thought it be much better if I only did art as a hobby, but never as a job.

>Programming
>image called software-programming
>shows HTML

I hosted a WoW private server when I was 10 years old and thought that everything would be a lot more complicated than it is. Learned to use MySQL to add items to the servers database and create gear, as well as set up an apache server so players can make accounts. Running all of this from some shitty laptop. Finally decide to try learning to code as a recommendation from one of the players on my server. "There's no way it's actually this easy to do all of this." was one of my first thoughts while learning to program.
Now I'm going for my masters in Computer Science.

> freshman in high school
> playing Second Life
> find out about some in-game language you can write to make objects do things
> learn the programming language and start selling them as products
> make in-game money and learn about MySQL+php since the game could talk to a server
> junior year I take on an internship for one project, learn front end
> graduate, pull job off Craigslist for developer (php, html, some js)
> 4 years later making 92,000 Inc bonus after a couple different job changes
> still haven't gone to college

tldr;
Programming kicks ass

10 year veteran programmer here. I never finished my CS degree. I got a programming job my junior year and never looked back. No one gives a shit if you have a degree if you can demonstrate your value. I also worked for the NSA for 6 years. I was also arrested at 16 for hacking my shitty small town ISP and getting caught.

>C++
>Whooped my ass real good

lol

If C++ hasn't kicked your ass yet you don't know it well enough.

True autists don't have any trouble learning programming, being a robot is already in their blood

This.

Yep. You must allow C++ to crush your soul in the beginning of your programming journey. You will thank yourself for it later on

I took prog classes in he and loved it..thkught I was ganna go to college for it. Never went to college. Became electrician and 10 plus years later I regret nothing. 56$/h usd. Work for city of ny

I took a C++ course at a pretty good CS university and felt destroyed. 1 week homework assignment took 20 hours to do sometimes. Didn't help that I had no friends in the class to work with unlike a lot of other people. Managed to get a B in the class. How much easier is java or python?

I actually went to college for art too until I dropped out. Directly after I found a really good job in a different industry altogether for about 9 years before I took my exit because I ended up hating it.

Now I'm 30, just taking some time off living off a generous package from my old work and savings.

I kind of want to look into programming as my next career path, but I have no idea where to start or if I'm too old to even consider it. I also have the opportunity to have my school paid for if I decide to go back to college. I've been learning through some online resources here and there but that's about it so far.

My first year in high school computer science, we didn't actually have computers. We used electric adding machines in the first semester, and IBM keypunch machines the second semester. We finally got Apple ][s the next year, and year after that we got a Corvus hard drive for the computer lab: 10 megs, and it was the size of a photocopier.

But on the bright side, it means I'm fully qualified to use a keypunch machine if they ever come back into style.

be praised that you learn programming in your uni, all i learned here was bullshit garbage like 6 fucking classes economics. And then we saw the introduction to
c#, asp.net, wcf, wpf
html, css, javascript (mainly jquery) node.js
android
php (no framework)
mysql, sql server
node.js
java
and, oh god, java servlets

java is the sucky version of c# and since c# can be compiled to run on all machines these days, there is no reason to learn java.
if you know c++, you will find c# and java easy
python is easy but has some interesting features.

For work i am now busy with R
and for the love of god that language should just die and get replaced by python.
Fuck R.

I really liked programming. Probably the most interesting thing I did in college.

Now I am a CPA though, so why would I go back to school to make less money.

>Didn't help that I had no friends in the class to work with
The Uni I took CS at nobody would help with shit because it was basically an internship and competition. Top 5 every semester would get paid internships for Intel starting at ~80k

College is a waste of money.
Teach yourself. Build a github portfolio.

depends on your definition of easier. C++ is so difficult in part because it's so god damn dumb. You have to manually do so many tedious operations that are readily available in other languages like Python.

Average CPA salary: $62k per year.
Average programmer salary: $95k per year. Probably at entry level.

Do you still do anything with wow? I actually hosted a private server just for myself, and I know LUA, and some server related stuff, but I was hoping to find some tutorials for adding in items, changing stats etc like you mentioned.
Yes it does.
What kind of programming? what programming languages did you know, before you got hired at the NSA?

Probably too broad of a question but what kind of path would you recommend for self learning? As far as what to learn before what?

this faggot just said java came from C#

Front end scripting and mobile development are big.
Learn some DBA stuff and back-end C# and maybe Java.

this is me That's pretty much what I did

Yeah I actually got my bachelors in a performing arts major and a few years later was like FUUUU that was a stupid decision, so I went back and got MS CS. Much better now!

these days java is objectively worse than c#.
better for you?

>be me dipshit kid in college with full ride and no idea what I want to do
>Choose biomedical engineering lul
>Make it through with the intention of going straight to field as our program claimed to do that
>hoodwinked.jpeg
>Can't go into a good job straight
>Work in restaurant for a little over a year
>Move cities
>Get interview for summer research through gfs med school
>it's in bioinformatics which I literally never heard about
>Killed interview and got full-time offer
>only know Matlab
>Thefuck.jpeg
>Only 3 months ago
>Finished my first project in less than 2 months
>Still don't know what I'm doing

Currently at work shitting waiting for the supercomputer to finish my script so I can analyze

Forgot to add I'm going to get a PhD in it now bc they gave me a killer offer and I like it

If you plan to work where you live now just google for some places that need programmers and go talk to them. My friend went to a local shop that works on code for some hospital database shit. They handed him a book and gave him 3 months to learn what they wanted. He passed the followup interview/test and was hired on the spot.

I don't use shitty normie programming languages. I mostly use
Python, PHP, Javascript, Bash

Python is bae
Fuck excel pandas for lyf

Weird. That's what made me get into coding too, wanting to hack games.

>be 13 years old
>maths class requires us to use TI-83 or newer, which has some features to write programs for complex calculations
>everyone uses it for games
>find out you can look at the source code and modify it
>start messing around, modifying the games
>end up creating my own game, realize this is fun
>pick programming course when I'm 16
>25 yo software engineer now, no regrets

That's interesting advice and I may just do that. I live in Denver and the tech scene here is booming.

Nice, obviously if I want to be a good programmer I should be able to do assignments individually. My point more so was that the class curve was kind of fucked up because while you were supposed to work individually, there were groups working together making it harder for people like me to do well. No excuses though, I should know it well enough myself.

SeeI did something similar
Hospitals are good places especially if they have a medical school and resources to burn on a newish department

I started with Python and LUA and they are child friendly tier easy. Java is a little harder, C++ is a cunt from what I hear, and assembly is a nightmare... so basically, you will be fine. Python has alot of amazing uses I never considered, when I started to see tutorials for it, that did crazy things. One was a really advanced facial recognition script, another was a really cool AI that's a companion like Siri, etc... start off with basic networking stuff with it, and simple AI, and go from there.. or you could use something like pygame etc to start making programs and such with it.

Is Python actually better than R?

I'm a bioscience phd student - I mostly know python so far, and was recommended recently to keep using python instead of R since I already am familiar with python and have SciPy, NumPy, etc.

Only reason I may need to use R is for statistics (although tempted to use SPSS where possible), such as PLSR.

True, but Im sure at some point everyone has a weird comma or something equally as stupid they got hung up on that someone else might spot immediiately

assembly is a nightmare but it will make you are better programmer. both coding and understanding how the shit you're writing is executed

Guys how do I Java? Anyone got any good online material recommendations?

Holy shit, I live really close, what are the chances? anyways, any advice user? the shitty town I am in has no IT jobs.
too true.
Is that WoWanon still here? still hoping for an answer to this. I can do alot of networking related things easily, and I've coded games and AI before, but I haven't really fucked with MMO stuff, but I really want to. I have my own laptop I can use as a server, so it's no issue. I set up vanilla before and really liked it, so I was thinking of doing that again.

I regret not continuing my studies in comp sci, i was fresh out of school, went to college to study it, the tutors we had were god awful, literally didn't give a shit about anyone, i hadn't really matured and was still in the idgaf about school stage of my life and i ended up just scraping by to get myself a pass in software development, now 25 wishing to fuck i had just stuck with it, i keep picking it back up a few times a year but i find it really difficult to keep pushing myself to self teach, although i have been recently really enjoying doing some unity tutorials.

>Holy shit, I live really close, what are the chances? anyways, any advice user? the shitty town I am in has no IT jobs.

me? no, I'm and I'm just beginning to get into programming, main concern is my age beginning to learn in a scene full of young bucks

Denver is getting stupid expensive though, we're moving out of downtown soon to somewhere cheaper closer to the burbs like Arvada or Aurora

> be me
> 12 yo
> 1994
> Program in Turbo Pascal 7
> Had many years with java, php, mysql
> Today I do C++ for safety controllers at work.

I got some books for hacking (inb4 edgy, I just want to be able to make AI for games, like bots etc) and it mentioned these, so I do want to learn it, I was just mentioning difficulty because they were worried... I am really interested though, and not too worried. I luckily have a friend that does some insane shit with assembly, so I know I can go to him if I have any questions.

Does anyone know of some good Java programming tutorials or online resources that cover the basics, but then more involved shit like mouse clicks, GUI's, Arrays and stuff??

what are you trying to do with java? There are many books for it, and many youtube tutorials, but it'd help to have a specific goal.

This.
This.
This.

I started programming right off the bat with C when I was 14, C++ when I was 15. Self taught, wanted to make games. I am a god now (28). I literally owe it to cutting my teeth in C, and never stopping learning.

As a bioinformatics noobie I'd say learn both
Python is supposed to be better at parsing than R but some stuff in the biofields is made in R only so you need to know how to make that run. As long as you can output what you need to a csv you can pandas it in Python

Is your job exciting/fun? I'm not being mean but it sounds boring tbh

I want to be able to make my code do stuff, like make a system for organising things such as cars in a car park or frui in a fruit bowl, that kinda shit

I don't know enough of R and python to be objective about it. Most people around me use R but don't know anything else. I am forced to use it for about 2 weeks. the scientists are too lazy to manipulate the data themselves. I bet they would have been done in a single or 2 days. Oh well, now they have an interactive dashboard for all their data.

but from what i read. R is better for data analyses but python is catching up. the problem with R is, that R is a clusterfuck where you need to find packages for everything.

>mfw i only wanted to learn coding so I can hack games, but it became my career path.

Same here. Became quite witty with C#/C++/ASM when coding bots for Guild Wars. Those times...

I need to write a Powershell script for one of my classes (beginning class). Any ideas? Can be anything really.

>bioinformatics
be prepared to not find a job

R is for the scientific packages support from the community (aka fancy shit other people make to save your life)
Python is for data manipulation/harvesting

Its 90% documentation, but all serious programming jobs are. Get used to it or find another trade :)

Its fun enough, I don't just program, I also got customer contact and go on commisioning on live systems 30-40 days a year.

Powershell is really useful in large data centers. Since its a beginning class do something like

>Close all open programs
>Begin updates
>Confirm updates applied successfully
>If one or 2 didnt, send report to email
>Restart machines
>Open usual programs
>Confirm programs running
>if not, email report

I got one for you.

>highschool. Suck at everything.
>take computer programming.
>score high 90s and win the award.
>teacher tells me IT is too competitive and i wont get a job.
>i believe him. That makes us both retarded.
>make game for grade 12 isu in actionscript.
>supah fun.
>highschool ends. Abandon programming for other careers in hobbies.
>12 years later. Its today.
>just started programming again.
>learned a bit of c#, python.
>now doing GML pretty hardcore.


Im still rusty and have a lot to relearn but honestly i feel alive again. Stick to your dreams kids.

you can look up all these and compile a noob tier script in literally 5 minutes

>MFW I actually got a secure job for the next 4 years and I'm in a program I can get a postdoc research fellow anywhere
If the us goes tits up I'm bailing to GER or NETH to hide in their labs until it'd fixed
Idk if you been keeping up with the trends but we gonna be big data in the next 15/25 years

FUCK UPLOADS GOD DAMN THE FUCK M8

That wasnt the point. Its an easy starter script for a beginning class with real world use

Got into coding when I was ~10. Would write these dumb batch scripts and be all "hacker" like to the other students because I could boot pinball on the computers

But it did increase my interest in computers from more general to making me want to actually be able to make apps and games for them.

Basically learned everything I know from online tutorials on coding, and just trying shit.

Also started to do actual hacking. Even hacked school, but not in the normie faggot way. More in the I hacked the exams way, also total control over website, windows domain, security camera system, basicly anything IT.

>mfw batch script caused me to become an actual hacker

Also starting comp sci study next year.

what do you do for a living? curious since you're close to my age

Drop python, it's shit.

>sophomore year in highschool
>take a computer networking class because I like video games
>teacher literally doesn't give a shit
>tells us to go to code academy
> then he just does his own thing for the rest of the school year
>never checked up on us the whole time
>whole class consists of us on youtube, playing minecraft/slender, etc
>actually programmed for the first half of year
>found it semi-interesting
>evenually stopped giving a shit and did other homework
>never touched programming again after
>decide to make website for senior project
>all HTML and css, no js or any cool shit
>hated the experience
>decide do not want to go into programming at all
>2nd year in college
>Math/Socialogy major
>take intro computer programming
>actually really enjoyable
>take more CS classes
>after that, been doing tons of little projects with new found interest in programming
>still decide not to major in CS because its watered down math for brainlets

> html
> programming
Fucking lol.

Im a carpenter. Scaffolder to be more specific.

I did.

found the .net faggot

Sounds like you want AI then, which aren't too complex. You should make a simple script or game then, and go from there with AI, it's alot more simple than most project ideas, so it's a good start.
Any tips for me? I am the newfag that was trying to ask the WoWanon some questions.
Python can also be used for many different things, things I never even thought of, you just have to find people whose youtube channel is devoted to programming to find tutorials for stuff, as an example, how I found tutorials for really advanced AI in python, because he also made tutorials for beginners too.
Not the user you replied to, but thanks for explaining it in such a way for him.
I agree.
he suggested something easy, because he wants the user to be able to do it for his class.

That was my story, except the tolerance for non-CS majors at big companies is decreasing at an amazing rate. Which is why I got my MSCS in AI from a top-10 school. I think the self-taught world is going to dry up pretty soon.

I started programming at age 13 by copy-pasting basic Actionscript code into flash and modifying it. Gradually learnt the basics of programming trying and failing to recreate Fancy Pants Adventures. Age 15 I learnt how to use Haxe. Later in the year I picked up Unity and thus learnt some C#. All that time I had been self taught because school I went to had literally no computer classes. Age 16 learn C++ and Java finally which for some reason I had avoided. Age 17 attended a competitive programming workshop and got introduced to a variety of algorithms and problem solving techniques. Age 18 now in my last year of high school and planning to take up computer science in a nearby university, but I'm worried about my chances of getting in because for some reason I kinda suck at algebra. Wish me luck in the entrance exams later this year

Programming is essentially a blue collar job. Its like an electrician to an electrical engineer. Even then, Computer Science is a fucking joke lmao

The only reason you would have trouble getting a CS job if you are self taught is because you aren't as good as the other candidates. Saying it's drying up is not a good way to put it. Google and Tesla are both perfectly fine with hiring self taught programmers and they are doing nothing but growing.

So
Did you learn to hack games?
if not
gtfo

>muh data

That simply isn't true. I can tell you from actual experience. EVERY single good programmer I know never finished their CS degree. They were smart enough to realize it's a scam past the first few basic programming classes.

math?
i am writing my thesis,
the degree is called software engineer
no math seen at all

i think my uni sucks

>being a sargeant is shit, because you are not a general

dat logic

>html
>programming
kys

Well I *was* that person and can tell you the things you get in a grad-level program you do not get from being self-taught. You only have half the puzzle.

engineering without maths is like kys without kys

I have a question to all the anons; how can I learn more about hex? I know enough to do basic edits, but I mean I want to understand pointers and such to create advanced trainers for games. I was thinking of using LUA mostly, though also maybe some python for raw hex editing. Thoughts? and please, if it sounds stupid or something, I would love better suggestions. I am a self taught newfag so yeah, I wasn't lucky enough to be born when most of you were, when computers only had a few programming languages.

any books i should read

you think that because you're placing more value on that degree than it's worth. I guarantee I can code circles around you in any language of your choice. And I have a much better understanding of the underlying code execution. And hardware stack. Just wait until you get in the real world kid

>bash
>programming language

>javascript
>not normie

wtf is wrong with you?

php is fine ass tho

...

>be me
>browsing Sup Forums because I can't make my program run
>read a shitty blog
>kiles ure shelf =((((((((((( no subscribe downvote

Learn what hex actually is. The number system, how to manually do arithmetic operations by hand. Start there and you wouldn't ask questions like that. You should learn assembly language and you'll get all the fucking hex your little heart desires

haha have fun with your asp.net
also c# and python is slower maybe less memory hungry but definitely slower
hurrdurr your everyday salty programmer hating on java

i ain't making asp.net websites.
php and node.js are better for that.
and i am definitely not making java servlets.

Thanks for the tip, where should I start with assembly? for game hacking I mean, should I just edit roms at first or what would you suggest? also thanks for the reply. I mean I get how hex works as in data storage, but I mean I just want to get to know it better.. understanding offsets and everything.