Programming for fun
- Thread starter Tritone
- Start date
There are still a few of us around.
Sherri is a Cat
Well-Known Member
Why does Atari come to mind?
CaffeineAddict
Well-Known Member
It was always a hobby for me, it all started long time ago when I was searching for a free crypter to encrypt malware, ofc. I didn't find any (except beginner samples on GitHub) because they're normally either made to be sold or for private use.
On forums that are long dead a dude told me, if you want crypter and can't pay then go learn cpp and assembly and make your own.
His comment had profound impact on me to start learning those languages, it took years and I eventually made a rudimentary runtime crypter.
However I'm no longer interested in coding and my knowledge is limited to Windows which I no longer use.
Programming requires constant learning and a lot of daily practice if you want to be able to make something that's of real world use.
On forums that are long dead a dude told me, if you want crypter and can't pay then go learn cpp and assembly and make your own.
His comment had profound impact on me to start learning those languages, it took years and I eventually made a rudimentary runtime crypter.
However I'm no longer interested in coding and my knowledge is limited to Windows which I no longer use.
Programming requires constant learning and a lot of daily practice if you want to be able to make something that's of real world use.
Have you heard about Pike, Icon or Arturo?
None of the above! While I don't follow such things as closely as I once did, three for three is pretty good score.Have you heard about Pike, Icon or Arturo?
Because they made some pretty fun machines? I picked up an Atari 400 at a garage sale for $10.00 then found a BASIC cartridge for it for $40.00. It was a huge step up from the Timex. The keyboard sucked so, after much saving up of money, I eventually went to a C64.
I started coding on C-64. BASIC, Assembly... Then I had 10+ years long break and in the early 2000s learned HTML and JavaScript. Soon after that I started language-hopping. I've tried everything mainstream and some pretty obscure ones. Sadly, I lost all my programming files in a backup disaster (that's the reason behind starting a topic about backups) and now I'm thinking about starting again. 
It's just for brain exercise. No help from AI, no copy/pasting from Stack Overflow.
It's just for brain exercise. No help from AI, no copy/pasting from Stack Overflow.
spacebanana
Member
I do it as a hobby and now professionally too
CaffeineAddict
Well-Known Member
I keep almost all of my project as private repo on GitHub, this is the only kind of online backup, so I kind of lied in your other thread when I said to keep only local backups.
Around 80% of those projects are learning projects that were useful to quickly recall coding standards and constructs.
IMO, AI is certainly bad to learn coding because it's not your own work, true learning requires your own trial and error and struggling trough debugging your own issues to learn anything from mistakes, knowledge of which will then remain in your head for years to come because you did it.
Stack Overflow is quite different, I've copied countles code samples from SO, the good thing is that SO samples are higher quality than AI code and you can learn from it a lot.
Also code samples on SO is licensed as CC which makes it suitable to include in your open source project, all you have to do is copy a share link below an answer and add somewhere above pasted code and also mention SO in your LICENSE file.
CC is compatible with many licenses.
I kept it locally. My laptop died, the external hard disk refused to cooperate and my son had deleted all the files I stored in his machine.
For me coding is like chess. What would be the point of using help from a chess engine to help you win the game? The entire point is that you do it by yourself.
I don't have a problem with using AI or Stack Overflow for learning, but I would never copy a piece of code I don't understand. In my code I have to know exactly what every single line is doing and why it's there.
CaffeineAddict
Well-Known Member
Sure thing, make sure to understand what copied code does because your debugger will eventually hit at it, what ever I copied from SO wasn't just blind copy but also some time to learn what it does.
IDK which language you plan to learn, but if your language of choice ships with standard libraries then make sure to utilize them instead of rewriting them, aka. reinventing the wheel.
reinventing the wheel is what I was doing and later figured out it was waste of time, it's only useful if you'll be working on something low level.
In any case your implementation will never be as good as some established library, at least not without a lot of effort.
Tell us about your journey from the C64 to present day?
I didn't "start" with the C64, but I didn't really get very far until I moved to a C64 - the times wasn't all that "new programmer friendly" and the Atari 400 really just wanted to be a game machine. The C64 was good for learning a bunch of different languages in addition to its own BASIC and 6510 assembly - though almost none of them proved -really- useful until I moved on to some better tech... you know - something with a z80.
As far as programming languages go, I used to "collect" languages, learning new ones just for the fun of it, But I made a couple of mistakes that you might want to avoid, if it's not already too late...
*) I viewed programming as an entirely technical endeavor - getting the computer to do what I wanted, within the constraints of whatever language, without regard for the "business" side of things, like how to solve real world business problems, how to design programs that other people might actually want to use, "why might someone want to pay me to do this".
*) I didn't view various application's built in "macro" languages as real programming languages and didn't consider all those big expensive "business applications" to be worthy of my time. What could possibly be interesting about, for instance, dBASE IIIPLUS? Fortunately, I did eventually get over that particular bias. I even learned a bit about Lotus 123.
*) I neglected to develop expertise, or even familiarity, with business process, so applying my "programming" knowledge to "things that someone might want to pay me to do" became problematic.
I've gotten over those mistakes but, alas, at this point in my life, my professional programming career is pretty much over.
Yes of course it is not linux, but offen we have Dual-Boot user (Win + Linux).
And for Win + Excel (or Winword, ...) user, a very easy to use programming language + compiler will be provided for free by e.g.: Excel, the VBA compiler, the IDE a.s.o..
VBA is a very easy to learn high-level programming language.
The internet provides non countable VBA source code examples.
Something like that I miss in Linux.
Also I miss, for "legacy-c-programmer" like me, rules how to compile github sources.
Often the dependencies not given, neither the compiler version nor ...
And imagine, if you would have like an easy programming interface to Libre-Office-Calc as it will be provided by Microsoft Excel via VBA.
(beneath, I does not use Excel, but Libre-Office-Calc I use, and miss an interface like VBA).
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There was a time when you needed to program to get much from a computer. It's logic, more or less, so I could program with some effort, though my typing skills were lacking at the time.
I never had much fun programming. It was a chore. It's what you did to accomplish a task. Commercial software would exist but that was mostly for more generic things - or things you could do to help you with your programming. There was much noise and much rejoicing when MATLAB was released, as one example.
So, I've not done much 'hobby' programming, though I have done some programming for practice and for learning. I even wrote a game at one point, but that was to learn and not so much as a hobby.
These days, most edge cases are covered. There's software for anything I want to do on a regular basis. There are still some holes but nothing I'd regularly do isn't already covered by existing software.
I never had much fun programming. It was a chore. It's what you did to accomplish a task. Commercial software would exist but that was mostly for more generic things - or things you could do to help you with your programming. There was much noise and much rejoicing when MATLAB was released, as one example.
So, I've not done much 'hobby' programming, though I have done some programming for practice and for learning. I even wrote a game at one point, but that was to learn and not so much as a hobby.
These days, most edge cases are covered. There's software for anything I want to do on a regular basis. There are still some holes but nothing I'd regularly do isn't already covered by existing software.
Surely not !
Did you install your grave preventively ?
So much to improve, e.g.: gnome-clocks, take the attachment. But you must install gnome-clocks before, not all dependencies solved by me.
Only remove the file extension (...) and start a time, the difference you will recognize.
Yeah hobbyist coding is fun, it's the only way you can really keep things simple: professionally, you gotta please customers and end users. Private repos on github are a good idea for keeping your, stuff no one remembers all their computer language jibberish.
Dealing with AI and stack exchange is brain exercise for sure.
No, no... My statement was quite true.
Do note that I spoke only for myself, so it's not relative to the statement if you assert your presumptions. My needs are met by the software that currently exists.
theLegionWithin
Well-Known Member
not a hobby though I did try my hand at learning C back in the late 90s - didnt do much with it, programming isnt for me. I like fixing the software side of things when it goes horribly wrong, not creating the software (that then goes horribly wrong)
