I thought it would be interesting to explore how everyone got into programming. Obviously, we are here because we enjoy c++, but i'm sure for most of you it isn't the only language you know. Was it the first?
I should also expand on what I mean by programming language. I'm not limiting it to just programming languages. In this case, I am also gonig to include anything that taught you the basics of programming, including scripting languages such as Javascript, TCL/TK, or something specific to some off the wall program.
For me, I dabbled a bit with Visual Basic a long time ago, but the first scripting language that really got me introduced was one built into mIRC which is an IRC client. Rather powerfull for what it was, but very different from normal programming languages.
I've messed with javascript, of course, and tcl/tk, along with perl, php, html, and css. But here's one that is interesting. Anyone ever play the old text mucks? Ever work with Muf? ('muck forth' i think it's short for) That's a language that works with a stack. It really forces you to write clean code and to think heavily about what you're doing.
Oh yea. and if you really want to see a wierd scripting language.. check out the Dragonspeak or Dspeak language used for the game Furcadia. I've been tempted to try to create a scripting language that is similar in style. It woudln't be too difficult to implement.
This.
2 months ago.
Some family members of mine know other stuff, like FORTRAN or BASIC, but not C/C++.
I've dabbled into HTML, but that was a few years ago. Besides, it doesn't count.
wow, you started off with Assembly? I've downloaded an ebook on assembly. re-read the first paragraph 10 times, then deleted the book cause I could NOT make any sense out of it. WOW..
I've also played with
VB, VBScript, C, C++, Pascal, Delphi, x86 Assembly, MIPS Assembly, Java, Forth, Haskell, Scheme, Tcl/Tk, Python, hmm... what else... shell languages (bash, c-shell, DOS BAT, etc.), custom languages, awk, make, umm... FORTRAN, JavaScript, ... I think that's it. Oh, PHP.
BASIC on Sinclair ZX-80, Comodore Pet, Sharp MZ-80K (and others which I can't remeber - all just a little different from each other...).
Then at Uni a smattering of Fortran (on the DEC Rainbow - anyone rember them?, the joys of an Engineering Degree rather than CS:-), but nothing more complex than most people would do in Excel these days.
The first 'real' programming language would be Pascal - Turbo Pascal and UCSD Pascal, later migrating to Delphi.
And then a whole range of others over the years (VB, numerous scripting languages, C++, Modula-2, SQL, PL/SQL, etc.)
@Grey Wolf: no problem, it is not like that it was totally uncalled-for. I just liked your typo ;-) Sorry for your day, though. Hope the next one turns out a little better.
Ummz, IIRC I started with C++, then I kinda layed off it and went to VBS, HTML, PHP...I have also done a bunch of random stuff on my TI-84 Plus, mostly video games when I was bored. Then I got back to C++ and was like "Woot! I can actually define variables with names!" (compared to TI-84).
Hated it? Mode 13 was the coolest advance the VGA brought to graphics cards. (Just because Basic is a clunky piece of junk can't use the BIOS correctly...)
The real fun came when playing with the various X modes. :-)
No way!
Whose was the great idea of sorting the palette by HSV?...With a phase of -60°. And even worse was the fact that it wasn't 4:3. Everything looked stretched unless you compensated. 320x200... That's how many times I want to kick that guy.
The one I did love, however, was 12. Now there's something you can use.
You are aware that you could set the palette to anything you wanted? (Choose 256 out of 262,144 colors.)
And what do you mean, "compensated"? All graphics processing has always had to deal with display aspect ratios. It isn't a great burden to design and use graphics that match the target video mode. Even today with ultra-high resolution displays, pixel sizes other than 1:1 are common.
BTW. It wasn't designed that way out of any malicious intent. It is simply a hardware limitation of the convenience brought about by chained video modes. If it really bothered you, you could always use an unchained X mode. It wasn't as fast or convenient because you had to dink with display planes again, but you could still use 256 colors at once. If you are willing to dink with display planes in mode 12h, why not dink with them and get more than (choose 16 from 64) distinct colors in an X mode?
Oh, and the palette sorting is just a numeric progression.