What jobs do you guys have?

[DrChill]

3 Questions:

1:What is the current programming job you have?
2:What do you do in it?
3:Do you enjoy it?

Yes "free lancers" count

[chrisname]

Well I'm in school. I've had a pretty good holiday... unfortunately I have to go back tomorrow.

[NGen]

If you can consider it a job (I'm not getting paid), I'm on a development team for an online game that is still in development. I'm assisting in the move from... well, let's say it's a much simpler, but much more restricted language and IDE, and onto C++. Unfortunately, most of the team has no knowledge of C++, and the previous language was much simpler so the learning curve was very small. C++ caused a few of the developers to quit. To make sure that the rest of the team can make the transition easily, I'm setting up an API for the team to use that is based on the SDL. I guess that answers 1 and 2.

3: Yes, very much. Since the other team members are waiting on me for the API to get done, I get the "Without my work, the others can't do much" feeling. It's a pretty good feeling.

[DrChill]

I hate to ask but is your band of computer game creators ... are they all 13?

@chrisname I homeschool so I complete the same amount of school as you, Japanese and C++ :P ... in 4 hours Bwahahahahhaahaaa *cough *cough hahahahha

[garob]

I homeschool too and I am working on a BASIC interpreter.

[chrisname]

Cool.

I was just thinking of a cool way to cheat writing a compiler. Write something that converts it's source to C or C++, then have it call GCC or G++ (or GCC with -lstdC++) to compile and link the C/C++.

[helios]

I think you should look up the definition of compiler.

[chrisname]

I know it's not really a compiler. That's why I said "cheat".

[helios]

No, my point is that it is a compiler.

[NGen]

I hate to ask but is your band of computer game creators ... are they all 13?

Nope.

[chrisname]

What???

A computer program which reads source code and outputs assembly code or executable code

What I'm doing is like translating, or interpreting or something. Then using a real compiler to compile and link the result...

I've already designed most of the language :P I'm calling it "E(nglish)" for English. I always thought it would be cool to have a programming language that takes real language and isn't COBOL. Writing the interpreter will be a bitch, but probably quite fun once I get started.

The syntax is like English, hence the name of the language:

Defining variables:
Syntax:
My data_type is called variable_name.

Example:
My integer is called Gary.
My string is called Jack.

One day I'll write a real compiler, maybe. Probably not though, seeing as writing a compiler is supposed to be second only to writing an operating system, and as I'm spending hours every day learning what I think I'll need to do the latter (in a few years :P) I don't know that I'll have time... My only fear is that something changes and everything I've learnt becomes useless... Unless that happens I've a pretty strong feeling I'll succeed at least in writing a very simple text-based OS... which is all I want.

Here's what an example program would look like, anyway:

; This is a single-line comment
;; This is a multi-line comment ;;

; Function to take a string from the stdin stream
My (string) function TakeInput. Parameters:.
Contents:
    My string is called Name, ; Declare a string called “Name”
    Listen to stdin hear 80 remember Name, ; Store 80 characters from stdin to “Name”
    Return Name.

; Function to output the results of the input function
My (void) function Output. Parameters: My string Input
Contents:
    Say “Hello,” Input. ; Output: “Hello, <name>” - spaces are automatically inserted.

;; Everything here not inside a function is part of the main() function,
    there is no global scope ;;

My string is called input has TakeInput with. ; Calls the TakeInput function with no parameters
Call Output with input. ; Calls the Output function with the value stored in “input”

I think it might be quite hard to implement all that, so I'll probably simplify it and then build on it...

[mcleano]

I'm in school too :( how suckish! Which reminds me, this year I imagine i'm going to be asking for maths help helios lol :| good old trig and what not!

Also, chrisname, pm me you msn :)

[chrisname]

Lol, trigonometry is easy, and I'm usually terrible at math!
The easiest thing is reciprocals.

I just checked, luckily it's nothing like COBOL, so that's good:

      $ SET SOURCEFORMAT"FREE"
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID.  ShortestProgram.

PROCEDURE DIVISION.
DisplayPrompt.
    DISPLAY "I did it".
    STOP RUN.

[helios]

Nope. That's the narrow definition. The broad definition is: a compiler is a program that translates code written in one language to equivalent code in a different language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiler

For example, no C compiler generates machine language (which is also a language, by the way). They all generate Assembly, which is then passed to an assembler.
There are also compilers that generate bytecode to be ran on virtual machines, or compiled (again) and ran by JIT compilers.
There are many compilers that generate C code from higher level languages. For example, Haskell.

[mcleano]

There are many compilers that generate C code from higher level languages. For example, Haskell.

So if someone wrote a program in Haskell could you not technically say that the program is a C program?

[helios]

That's an odd question. If I translated your question to Spanish, could you say that the translation is in Spanish? Of course you could. Once the translation is done, the original language is irrelevant (assuming the translation is good).

You could say that the program is in C, but it would be more useful to say that the C program was generated by a Haskell compiler. Likewise, it's more useful to say that a program is written in C, even when what the computer actually runs is machine language.

[chrisname]

Interesting. You know, something that interests me about you is that despite your natural language being Spanish, you speak such good English, you could teach it to English people. I think you said you were 21? I know English teachers of English that are at least twice that, and you speak better English than them.
How long have you been learning English for?

Oh and from what I've read,an exokernel looks like it fits into the sort of thing I'd like... Then again, I still know virtually nothing about operating systems, and by the time I get to that stage it might be obsolete. Sigh... Learning is fun but I wish I could do it all at once.

Oh and that reminds me, helios, you know that C (a subset of C iirc) compiler you wrote? I didn't manage to run that ONSlaught thing yet, though I did find out how to get 7z with the apt. Maybe it was something to do with how I unzipped it with WINE+WinRAR. Anyway, have you got a download link for that somewhere?

[JCED]

You know, something that interests me about [helios] is that despite [his] natural language being Spanish, [he] speak[s] such good English

I see this a lot. I think it has to do with how you learn a language. We learn English by example, but foreigners often learn it by remembering rules, thus they are aware of the rules of English where native speakers often aren't (to an extent). This is why I think that learning a second language helps you with your native language; you learn the rules of language, and if you're attentive, you'll be able to see the parallels between your native language and the one you're learning.

On-topic:

1:What is the current programming job you have?
2:What do you do in it?
3:Do you enjoy it?

1. I'm a student.
2. Study.
3. Depends on the class.

[helios]

Since I was 9. I became acceptably good some time between my 15s and 17s. You know what the best part is? Aside from a few books, I didn't pay anything to learn.
Something else that's free around these parts: college.
Really, it's not that I'm great, it's just that most people don't care enough to write carefully. This is true for speakers of both of my languages. People disregarding grammatical (in Spanish, que, qué, tu, tú, el, and él are all different words with different meanings) and orthographical accents or replacing some letters with phonetic equivalents ("que" -> "ke" being the most serious offender) are not uncommon. And get me started on people who don't use proper keyboard layouts and can't type ñ or ¿ (although ¿ is often omitted anyway).

But I digress.

Oh and that reminds me, helios, you know that C (a subset of C iirc) compiler you wrote? I didn't manage to run that ONSlaught thing yet, though I did find out how to get 7z with the apt. Maybe it was something to do with how I unzipped it with WINE+WinRAR. Anyway, have you got a download link for that somewhere?

I'm confused. I don't understand if you want a link for my smallC or for NONS, so here's both:
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/6/22/1971683/smallC.7z
https://sourceforge.net/projects/onslaught-vn/files/

You couldn't even get it to compile? That's odd. It does have a few requirements:
1. SDL should be called libSDL.a. There should at least be a symlink to it in /usr/lib (or whatever the directory is).
2. The same for SDL_image.
3. And for SDL_mixer.
4. Requires bz2 and freetype

I also tested the statified binary on several distros and never had a problem, other than fonts looking kinda weird.

[chrisname]

Personally I think that the effort he, and many other non-native speakers, put into learning another language so well is admirable. Then again they say if you can learn C you can learn any language. Maybe that applies to natural language, too.

What doesn't impress me is when people can't be bothered to speak their own language properly, and you get this:
hi cn u hlp pls i cnt do ths cn u hlp me to??????

Edit, thanks! It will be fun to use it. And I didn't try compiling ONSlaught from source yet.