No Tag Backs
by: eric | July 3rd, 2008 |
Well Micah tagged me, and if I look at these XML request/responses for another hour without a break I’m going to pass out into my keyboard. Here goes.
How old were you when you started programming.
I had a Texas Instruments computer thingy that I got for my 6th or 7th birthday, somewhere in there. It played these educational games, but I noticed one day that if I didn’t put a cartridge in it a blue screen came up with a cursor. It had an instruction book and I would basically type in the programs verbatim, then do little things with it like change a color or a line. Later I had an Atari XE and it did the same thing, so I made the same little guessing game in it just like the one I made on the TI. Realistically I didn’t write anything of use until high school though.
Interestingly, perhaps only to me, my version of Hello World for the iPhone SDK was a guessing game.
How did you get started programming.
I guess that was the real answer. I played with my dad’s computers all the time but didn’t consider it as a career until I was about 16 or 17, when I realized I could probably get paid for it. Up until then I wanted to be a sports journalist. So I went to school so I could found my own game company.
What was the first real program you wrote?
What counts as “real”? The guessing game? Making horizontal lines appear on the screen? I wrote a bunch in Basic and Pascal for homework assignments, and like Micah had one of those TI calculators. The first specific one I can recall was a text-based adventure game I made for a homework assignment my freshman year. It was based on the Haymarket Bombing
What languages have you used since you started programming?
Pascal, C, C++, C#, COBOL, Assembly, Perl (but I won’t admit it), Java, Objective-C, Ruby, Javascript, Lisp, VB, Erlang, and I just wrote Hello World in Smalltalk (Squeak).
I too doubt I could write Hello World in most of those languages, and wouldn’t put them all on my resume. It’s funny because I probably would have when I came out of school, since I didn’t know the difference between “familiar with” and “able to write some code with”.
What was your first professional programming gig?
I started a web design company in college, which employed me and myself. I had two clients, one of whom paid me in Kung Fu lessons.
If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
Find great people to work with. If you’re the smartest person in the room, you need a new room, because if you’re not growing you’re dying. This is tricky when you’re new, since you don’t know a great developer from a tree stump, but take a look at Micah’s tag list. It looks like the list of authors in my library.
I would also tell them they should come to work for me as my apprentice, unless they weren’t any good. Then they can work for Jim.
What’s the most fun you’ve ever had programming?
Working with the team I work with now is fantastic. I also had a great time working Agile 2007 as part of RailsFest, and I’m looking forward to doing the same thing on the Live Aid stage this year.
Up Next
Sadly I don’t know many developer’s who keep blogs, so I’ll just echo Micah’s list and tell Paul, Jim, Doug and Matt they’re next.