Flatballer

I guess pointers are frustrating and especially so for beginners. And you can certainly write very involved programs in a high level language without ever needing to learn what a pointer is or does or how to write a sort algorithm or anything like that. So maybe there's no need to learn those things anymore, just call the library function and move on.

myList.Sort();

Done!

edit: and I think your maybe on Perl should probably be a definitely not. It's such an arcane language with insane syntax and ridiculous flexibility that will allow you to write completely garbage code that works, and many people do. $| = 1 turns off buffering in Perl. Where the heck did that global variable come from? Is that in any way readable to a person who doesn't know Perl very well? To make matters worse the common idiom in Perl code is $|++ instead, despite that being a global variable you didn't create and don't know that it's 0.

mattm

For beginners yeah, I think pointers are just overkill.

That said any serious programmer should know how to wield them, eventually. You can do cool stuff with function pointers. But in higher level languages they're just a "delegate" and much easier to deal with.

Anyway I think people should start at a high level to get the basics, then dig deeper over time.

Assembly language is really cool, but really really hard. Can't believe people used to start with that!!

MOV 0x1111 EAX
PUSH EAX
POP EAX

Did a little bit of x85 asm in college and was blown away. Makes C seem like child's play!

TheKillerPenguin

Learning PHP as a starting language was cool because I could dive in quickly, but it teaches SO MANY BAD HABITS that you have to consciously unlearn. Something like C which does not suffer fools would be dope to know. It is on my list (with all of my spare time...)

Harlan

I had to teach myself ASM during a college internship (already had taken a C++ class) and implement a third order polynomial for some sensor (I used to work for a data logger company) I think soil moisture. Pretty sure they still sell that logger, with my code on it. I was way better at writing C code to test the finished product. Good times. I miss coding sometimes - I just did a little Teraterm macro for my current job. Still got it!

spectastic

How much hard drive capacity do you guys use? I want to think 128g ssd is adequate, because i hate having clutter of stuff that are of no practical utiliy. However, the diminishing return in price is also enticing

TheKillerPenguin

I'm using 161gb after 1.5 years with the same computer. 57.5 of that is media and I could live without it pretty easily.

globecanvas

Really once you know one procedural language you know them all, one OO language, etc. I don't have a resume, but if I did, the "pure" languages on it (in the order I learned them) would be basic, cobol, awk, perl, lisp, tcl, C, C++, java, python, php, ruby, objective C, ASM, lua. I'm sure I'm forgetting some. "Pure" meaning not bash, SQL, latex, etc.

Flatballer

Does your laptop have space for a small form factor ssd plus a magnetic drive? That's what I did. 500GB drive I think, then I added a 128GB ssd. If you have that, or an external drive to keep media on, 128 is plenty. Also depends on if you program or do anything else that takes huge space. VS2015 is something like 15GB now I think. Larger than Windows 10.

mattm

Indeed.

Except for Objective-C; its syntax really threw me for a loop!

Ygduf

I prefer subjective-C

mattm

That's just like, your opinion, man.

globecanvas

I also had a hard time learning objective C, and I still have to think too much when I use it to keep from leaking objects or whatever. It's sort of pasted together from 2 very different languages.

happybday29475

lol he said "cobol"

and did you never learn APL? That was one of my faves...could do amazing stuff, but illegible, you could never figure out what you'd done...

spectastic

anyone tried to hack their garmin 500 unit? The only thing I really want to do is alter the data fields on my navigation page, so that I can look at 3s power and lap time while training on a preloaded course. That can't be too hard, right?

I've thought about getting a 520 for this reason, but I'd rather learn a little bit about coding.

dz_nuzz

I already looked into Trying to hack the firmware of the Garmin units. Unless you have a way of decompiling their firmware I would guess you are SOL.

spectastic

what if you make your own update?

mollusk

I have been doing some consulting with a huge multi-national firm and it has gone fubar. I have delivered 95% of the code and only just got paid for 50%. My invoices and Statement of Work has vanished from my billing portal. I was supposed to have a net meeting with my contact last Friday and I told him about the weirdness and he didn't show for the net meeting and now its crickets with my emails. What I delivered will save them huge amounts of engineering man-hours. FRAK!

Enthalpic

Tell them you found a mistake in the code, that should restore communications.

Homebrew01

No love for RPG ?

Flatballer

Damn. That's crazy. Seems like you should be able to get your money eventually, but it will be a huge pain. I guess huge multi-national also means deep pockets and lots of lawyers. You'd think it would also mean "we won't screw you" but who knows. Hopefully there's an explanation.

mattm

@Flatballer just saw this, you're right about perl. python is a better replacement.

And yeah the whole $| for buffering, $? for last exit code (?), and $! for last error... some weird **** going on there.

But in some cases you need perl (at least I have, when it's the only scripting available on some weird platform), so it has come in handy. But learning? Yeah, no.

dz_nuzz

Doesn't really work like that. You would never be able to make your update from scratch. The best you could do is take a firmware file and try to decompile / reverse engineer it. The problem is that you need to know what was initially done to compile that firmware. That can be based upon many factors including but not limited to what the processor's chipset instruction sets are, how memory works inside the unit, etc. More or less, you would need to break into the Garmin servers / workplace and steal their compiler settings.

globecanvas

Python has plenty of quirks too, arguably more fundamental ones even. If we're just talking about an an entry point to learning programming, imo Perl is as fine as Python. You won't be setting any magic variables in a hello world or guess the number type of context.

But both of those languages are sort of behind the times now (Perl especially), and the most relevant issue is that both of those particular languages impose a state of mind on the programmer. I have always been annoyed by Python's rigid rules for code structure on the screen and personally I have always loved the loosey-goosey state of mind that Perl enables or even encourages. But neither of those is an especially portable state of mind. I've never really thought about it in these terms before, but starting with something like PHP does have the advantage that it encourages a very linear state of mind without being forcing you to spend too much time on the language specifics. I find programming in PHP a bit boring myself but for that very reason it's probably a better place to start than Python or Perl.

TheKillerPenguin

TKP needs his curly brackets!

furiousferret

My first language was Java, then C++. I haven't coded for a few years now though, stuck as a server admin.