Why did you learn to program?

[Schrodinger]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Our computer classes in high school basicaly consisted of typing tutors, BASIC and Pascal. So it was essentialy required to take an intro to programming if you wanted a computer class. After HS I went to a 18-month tech school which also had a handfull of programming classes like x86 assembler, C++ and VB and a unix course that was essentially sh scripting so I got a lot of exposure to programming but nothing too useful. For a while I really did want to learn how to program more than lemonade stands but I found it extremely hard to come up with a good project that wasn't out of my league and all of the Windows development crap costs a ton of money that I didn't have. Then I got a job that required no programming skills, just doing helpdesk calls, but even though it was pointless to learn I still fiddled with things once in a while when I got the urge.

And in my free time I fought my way into Linux, constantly reinstalling the thing because I didn't have a clue what I was doing. But I kept fighting because I hated Windows and Linux seemed so cool. Eventually I got comfortable with it and when you run a unix system you eventually start writing your own scripts so I started playing with bash/sh and perl scripts. Now I'm nearly dependent on it, the first thing I did when I got my new Win2K machine at work was install cygwin and ActivePerl because cmd and WSH suck. And now that I'm 99% full-time Linux I've got thousands of free software packages with source code available and I don't know how I lived without them. I'm still really rusty in languages like C and C++ because I don't have any real use for them, but I use sh and perl fairly regulary in my job.

well except for a nix MAC spoofing tool

You wrote ifconfig?

No... though ifconfig works I wanted something more. A corny ass perl script that selects random MAC address by a random vendor (or you may select one of the major vendors...all are legit and stored in a vendor file) and then spoofs the interface you select. I couldn't just pull legit vendor prefixes from my ass

 

[Patt]

Originally posted by: oboeguy
Where's the option for "I liked playing with LOGO in the 4th grade"? That's how I got started.

LOL ... someone else then too (see my earlier post) ... fantastic. Being in the enrichment classes in Elementary school allowed plenty of time to draw pictures with my little pixellated turtle!

 

[znaps]

I started in the 80's with an old Amstrad 8-bit computer. After finding some programs in magazines that gave me unlimited lives in my favourite games, I wanted to write my own. They were a mixture of BASIC and machine code. That was kind of nice in hindsight because I learned high-level and low-level programming at the same time. I didn't just stick to game cheats through, I wrote some games and other utilities of my own.

9 years later I got a degree in Computer Science with some electronics thrown in. I didn't find it too difficult to be honest, but that was mostly due to what I taught myself in the years before.