macOS Age of Programmers

[duggram]

Hard to believe but I'm 58 now. The first time I did any kind of programming was '72 in the army where we used teletypes to create tapes that were fed into a reader that created punch cards that were fed in to one of those house sized Univacs.

I did have a commercial programming career in the 90's but back then I was deep into the dark side. Just got my first Mac and now I'm looking to do some recreational programming.

Doug

 

[iJohnHenry]

68 here.

Started programming/analysis with the conversion from card systems to IBM 360-20. (Career path abrupt turn at age 30.)

Remember wire boards, l-o-n-g sorters, 029 & 129 card punch stations, etc. Used card chad for many devious tricks. And tape ring ring toss. And many other "games".

Programmed in COBOL and RPG, and a few others.

 

[chitin]

46 and not a professional programmer (a leisure programmer?).
I started writing some code for a calculator, the HP41C, back in 1982 (I think). I was studying Architecture and the professor that taught Structures (calculation) said we could use any tools we wanted during the exams. Man, how did those HP41C proliferate, I got mine shipped from Hong Kong (to Spain).
After that, a long lapse until 1994 or so when I decided to write a programm to help me with my research on analysing structural properties of cities. C, a Mac (SE30 at the time) and a fair number of years got me a decent prototype. After another longish gap I'm back and starting to get into Xcode, Cocoa, Objective C 2.0 and all this.
What I find most different now is the immediate access to a vast range of resources thanks to the Internet. It's really great.

 

[Flynnstone]

46 and not a professional programmer (a leisure programmer?).
I started writing some code for a calculator, the HP41C, back in 1982 (I think). After another longish gap I'm back and starting to get into Xcode, Cocoa, Objective C 2.0 and all this.

How about going full circle, how about a HP41CX calculator for OS X?
I dropped mine a couple years ago, and its a bit hard to read the screen.

 

[jamesapp]

i am 32 and have been fooling around with programming for several years.
started out with q-basic on a mac se running ms-dos as an emulator.
i am currently trying to learn objective-c

 

[Sayer]

And for the record.... You are NOT a "programmer" [IMHO] until you are being paid on a regular basis, to design, code and implement computer projects. My opinion, no flames required.

Okay so if you do work-for-hire software development (design, code, implement) and thus don't get paid regularly you aren't a programmer?

What if you only design and code and not implement (uhm, okay). Or if you get a spec and code to the spec and thus don't design anything really?

Don't post flame-bait and then say don't flame it. Geeze. Get some Zoloft already - or drink, more.

Oh yeah, I am in the fourth category, for a little while more anyway.

 

[iJohnHenry]

Easy Son.

We are getting into semantics here.

The definition may have changed from my day, but the analyst interfaced with the user to design the specs, then passed it over to to the programmer for execution.

 

[FelixMC]

15 ..

 

[Duke Leto]

Interesting choice of age bands in the poll - looks like it must have been set up by some kid who thinks over 35 is old.

Hehe thats me. I honestly didnt know what to put as the bands. I was bored and wanted to see, expecting about 5 people to vote. I didn't know how old anyone was, honestly. If you want to put a better poll, be my guest.

Seriously though, sorry about the bad age groups.

 

[Catfish_Man]

Easy Son.

We are getting into semantics here.

The definition may have changed from my day, but the analyst interfaced with the user to design the specs, then passed it over to to the programmer for execution.

That actually explains a lot. Like why good UIs are so rare :/

 

[hewcardpacklet]

36. But I cannot program long hours like I used to (and had to). I now have my own company (not even tech-related) and I use computers more for fun now ... I kind of miss the diet coke long programming crunches to squash the bugs.

 

[chitin]

How about going full circle, how about a HP41CX calculator for OS X?
I dropped mine a couple years ago, and its a bit hard to read the screen.

Hmmmm, not sure. It wouldn't be that much fun as an on-screen gadget, not being able to insert those funny plastic cards where you recorded the programs to share with your mates...
Unless, that is, you had a USB converted card reader... (those that attached to the top of the calculator)

 

[Flynnstone]

That actually explains a lot. Like why good UIs are so rare :/

Good UI are rare because too many are designed by programmers.
Programmers don't do a good job because they think like programmers. Users don't think like programmers. A good book to read is "The Humane Interface" by the late Jef Raskin. If you don't know who Jef Raskin is, then you should. Especially if you are a Mac diehard.

Hmmmm, not sure. It wouldn't be that much fun as an on-screen gadget, not being able to insert those funny plastic cards where you recorded the programs to share with your mates...
Unless, that is, you had a USB converted card reader... (those that attached to the top of the calculator)

Mac are great at compositing. It should be straight forward to overlay those funny plastic (virtual) cards.

You got me on the converted USB card reader. I don't follow.

 

[iSee]

Hehe thats me. I honestly didnt know what to put as the bands. I was bored and wanted to see, expecting about 5 people to vote. I didn't know how old anyone was, honestly. If you want to put a better poll, be my guest.

Seriously though, sorry about the bad age groups.

Actually, when you look at the distribution of votes across the bands you see a pretty good bell curve shaping up, which implies the band ranges are pretty good. Sure, there could be one more at the top... I'm happy though; I'm not in that last range

 

[lazydog]

I wonder if there is any correlation to age group and preferred programming language? Perhaps the last category should have been 46++

b e n

 

[iSee]

^^^^

That's so bad. So very, very bad. Posting really disgustingly bad puns should be a bannable offence

 

[Catfish_Man]

Good UI are rare because too many are designed by programmers.
Programmers don't do a good job because they think like programmers. Users don't think like programmers. A good book to read is "The Humane Interface" by the late Jef Raskin. If you don't know who Jef Raskin is, then you should. Especially if you are a Mac diehard.

I'm well aware of that, being one of the rare people who actually had to think when picking Design/Psych vs CS (I picked CS) for a major. I was mostly just gently mocking iJohnHenry from the point of view of someone working at a company with an emphasis on more recent methodologies.

 

[lazydog]

^^^^

That's so bad. So very, very bad. Posting really disgustingly bad puns should be a bannable offence

Yup… it was pretty bad!

b e n

 

[Duke Leto]

I didn't mind the pun, but the fact is, C++ is still a good language to start from to this day, not just the people that were there from the beginning.

 

[Cromulent]

I didn't mind the pun, but the fact is, C++ is still a good language to start from to this day, not just the people that were there from the beginning.

C/C++ aren't going anywhere for quite a while. They are still the only languages (along with ASM) that are suited for embedded development. C and ASM still rule the roost for that type of programming.

 

[lazydog]

I didn't mind the pun, but the fact is, C++ is still a good language to start from to this day, not just the people that were there from the beginning.

Yup, totally agree In fact I wish Apple had chosen C++ instead of Objective-C. At the risk of sounding like an old git I'm going to say I really don't like the memory management model of Objective-C with its retain/release reference counting and auto-release pools etc. It's supposed to make memory management easier, but all it does is replace one set of problems with a different set, making it look like a new paradigm, but it isn't really. I much prefer the good old honesty of memory management in C/C++. Yeah, I know v2 has garbage collection. I haven't tried it yet but if it's as good as Java's then… great! Still don't like all the [ [ ] ]'s though, much prefer -> ->.

b e n

 

[lee1210]

Yup, totally agree In fact I wish Apple had chosen C++ instead of Objective-C. At the risk of sounding like an old git I'm going to say I really don't like the memory management model of Objective-C with its retain/release reference counting and auto-release pools etc. It's supposed to make memory management easier, but all it does is replace one set of problems with a different set, making it look like a new paradigm, but it isn't really. I much prefer the good old honesty of memory management in C/C++. Yeah, I know v2 has garbage collection. I haven't tried it yet but if it's as good as Java's then… great! Still don't like all the [ [ ] ]'s though, much prefer -> ->.

b e n

This is obviously going off-topic, but I just want to say the only reason
-> and .
are unsettling is the "loaded" meanings. When dealing with system level things, there's a lot of structures floating around, and pointers to them. If i see a -> (and this is probably due to years of C exposure) my first thought is that i'm referencing a field from a structure that I have a pointer to. The dot is the same. It would be an abysmal practice, but if you had a number of function pointers in structures, you would never have any idea what's going on w/ z->x().

I know you should have a pretty good idea of what sort of thing you are dealing with (struct, struct pointer, object), but... dagnabit why couldn't stroustrup have picked different operators. & doesn't bother me as much but... reference AND bitwise and... blargh.

-Lee

 

[lazydog]

... dagnabit why couldn't stroustrup have picked different operators. & doesn't bother me as much but... reference AND bitwise and... blargh.

-Lee

I guess in the 70s they were stuck with ASCII… hang on, we're still stuck in ASCII… I wonder if we'll still be stuck in ASCII in another 30 years time? I guess it won't bother me at 76!

b e n

 

[MiBerb]

48 but not exactly a programmer

Although I made my first developments with Fortran and Watfive S in the late seventies, for many years now I'm on the users side. But still fun on both sides.

 

[don't do it]

14 here.

14 as well