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I was reading Cornelius's (@cornelius-henning) post about plugging gaps in his understanding of C# and his story is very similar as mine. I also taught myself how to program 30 or so years ago from Basic, Assembler, Pascal, to C#.
I was wondering, how many here on CP has a similar story? Are you self taught or do you have a CS degree in programming?
(This would probably make a good poll, if it hasn't been done already.)
When you are dead, you won't even know that you are dead. It's a pain only felt by others.
Same thing when you are stupid.
modified 19-Nov-21 21:01pm.
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I have a CS degree, but most of what I know now, I learned by myself in the last 20+ years.
C# did not exist, C++ was far from what it is now, IDE were mostly non existent.
OpenGL was just born (who remember GL).
Unix was still strong and everyone loved X11 and Motif
The web was still gopher and FTP and newsgroups.
I'd rather be phishing!
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Funny, my degree is in Professional Chemistry. I guess it is as valid as the old CS degrees now.  
When you are dead, you won't even know that you are dead. It's a pain only felt by others.
Same thing when you are stupid.
modified 19-Nov-21 21:01pm.
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Maximilien wrote: I have a CS degree, but most of what I know now, I learned by myself in the last 20+ years.
Ditto. Every technology I knew when I graduated, or learned during my first few professional years, has long since been superseded.
Which is not to call anything I learned a waste. Everything I learned then was a building block for everything I know now. 
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Donathan.Hutchings wrote: Are you self taught or do you have a CS degree in programming?
To be perfectly honest, what I learnt on my CS degree course all those years ago was ... um ... useless knowledge for the most part. It wasn't until I was out in the real world that I learned how to really program - but since it was a "thin sandwich" course with 6 months Uni, and 6 months industry the transition to "actually able to do it" started at the end of my first year.
I have since always found most "recent graduates" in CS have always be ivory tower b*llsh*t merchants who think they know it all because they can spout the words ...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: I have since always found most "recent graduates" in CS have always be ivory tower b*llsh*t merchants who think they know it all because they can spout the words
Oh yessssssssssssss! Do I see a lot of that on a daily basis?
Now is it bad enough that you let somebody else kick your butts without you trying to do it to each other? Now if we're all talking about the same man, and I think we are... it appears he's got a rather growing collection of our bikes.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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OriginalGriff wrote: I have since always found most "recent graduates" in CS have always be ivory tower b*llsh*t merchants who think they know it all because they can spout the words ...
I've run into the same type of folks.  The other kind of "programmers" are the ones who studied for the Microsoft Certs and nothing else that drive me crazy. They have the same attitude.
Dilbert - Vast Power Of Certification
When you are dead, you won't even know that you are dead. It's a pain only felt by others.
Same thing when you are stupid.
modified 19-Nov-21 21:01pm.
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OriginalGriff wrote:
I have since always found most "recent graduates" in CS have always be ivory tower b*llsh*t merchants...
In my opinion, that's because they learned (about) how to program, not solve problems. Two very different things. By using the former, you only know how to manipulate the problem to adhere to the computer languages you know. If, however, you know how to solve the problem, the computer languages you know are irrelevant (i.e., any one of them will do).
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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Self taught.. worked my way through Commodore machines from 1981 (VIC-20, C64, Amiga A500). Stuck with just Windows for a while, then ventured into Mac and Linux. Still try to keep learning new stuff as much as I can 
Now is it bad enough that you let somebody else kick your butts without you trying to do it to each other? Now if we're all talking about the same man, and I think we are... it appears he's got a rather growing collection of our bikes.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Similar... Commodore PET - BASIC then Assembler, then C64.
College was VAX/VMS BASIC, VAX/VMS Assembler, COBOL, PASCAL, RPG...
Then I hit the working world and started using VAXVMS FORTran and FMS (forms).
Self taught on VB and largely stayed there.. when I have to program, its VB.NET now.
Largely administer OSISoft tools, so not a lot of programming.
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I remember using VAX at college for COBOL programming. BASIC was where I lived for quite a few years, although I did tinker with machine code on the VIC-20 and C64. The Amiga had enough BASIC compilers to live without assembler
I've done C# for the longest period but there's been C, C++, VBScript, VBA, Pascal (at school), various versions of BASIC, a weird language called Omnis, a proprietary one called Protel, Swift, a bit of Java every now and again, plus all the usual javascript and CSS frameworks.
Now is it bad enough that you let somebody else kick your butts without you trying to do it to each other? Now if we're all talking about the same man, and I think we are... it appears he's got a rather growing collection of our bikes.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Cool! A Commodore guy.  I started on the Tandy machines. My first was the TRS-80 MC-10. I checked out a book called "100 games in Basic" and typed every one of those things in. The tough part was on the MC-10, you had to use a pencil to type on the keyboard, because the keys were so small. 
When you are dead, you won't even know that you are dead. It's a pain only felt by others.
Same thing when you are stupid.
modified 19-Nov-21 21:01pm.
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Yeah, Commodore were sensible enough (perhaps because of their typewriter experience) to put a half-decent keyboard on their machines. The Sinclair computers were capable machines but the keyboards were (IMO) awful.
Funnily enough, I've recently bought both a Commodore Amiga (A1200 this time around) and a Commodore C64. It's weird using them again, although I have to say that using the Commodore 64 again gave me a bit of a warm feeling. With the Amiga, I'd originally had the A500 with Workbench 1.2/1.3 - the newer version on the A1200 isn't as nice.
Now is it bad enough that you let somebody else kick your butts without you trying to do it to each other? Now if we're all talking about the same man, and I think we are... it appears he's got a rather growing collection of our bikes.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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I soldered together my first computer and wrote machine language programs almost 15 years before I ever started to study anything.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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Wow!  That is hardcore! 
When you are dead, you won't even know that you are dead. It's a pain only felt by others.
Same thing when you are stupid.
modified 19-Nov-21 21:01pm.
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It just means that I had to finish school first and then did not want to see a school for a while. That's why I signed up for an outfit that calls itself 'Luftwaffe' for a few years.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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Donathan.Hutchings wrote: Are you self taught or do you have a CS degree in programming?
I've never actually heard of a "CS degree in programming." I have multiple CS degrees, but I only had one "programming" class, and it was a segue into a compiler-creation class. Programming is merely a tool you can use to finish solving a problem. The theory and math are all done outside of the keyboard and compiler constraints. In graduate school, we used the computer mostly for creating charts, diagrams, and thesis papers.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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Self taught 50 years ago: LEO III[^] assembler and intercode, followed by various other languages, many of which I have forgotten (COBOL, Fortran, Pascal, RPG, Sparc assembler, etc.), and some which I can remember bits of (C, C++, C#, Java, Python etc.). I did once attend an in-house COBOL course.
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Donathan.Hutchings wrote: Are you self taught or do you have a CS degree in programming?
Both. The CS degree exposed me to a lot of data structures and programming concepts. It also tried to expose me to some languages, but their choices were mostly useless (who needs to know CDC-6500 assembly). I taught myself basic, Z80 assembly, C, C++, OO programming & OO design, C# and pretty much everything else that I've ever used in a business environment. To this day, I still rely heavily on stuff I learned from both avenues.
As for what hardware, let's just say I've written code to run on systems with actual ferrite core memory and leave it at that
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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patbob wrote: As for what hardware, let's just say I've written code to run on systems with actual ferrite core memory and leave it at that
CDC-6500 and ferrite cores - another Michigan State University grad???
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Nope, points further south -- Purdue. Serial numbers 2 & 3 as I heard. Still in service until sometime in the 1990s (and now trying to get a second life in the Living Computer Museum[^] according to what I heard). Must be some kind of record for the longest in-production use of a computer or something. And they probably made us learn assembly for it because, well, they had it 
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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I started out as self-taught then went to university for CS degree. Dabbled with BASIC as a child. Taught myself C++ in my late 20's. Learned how to "code" with VBA. Took years of CS classes at a local university where I learned all about the fundamentals such as architecture, algorithms, and data structures (mostly in Java). Got a job. Got my feet wet in .Net with VB. Now I do most of my work in C# and SQL with a little bit of JavaScript mixed in to spice up some internal web sites.
I can tell you that I learned a lot more outside the classroom than in it but the classroom teaches you why things are they way they are so that you don't waste your time fighting up-hill battles or attempting to re-invent the wheel (re-engineering the wheel is fine, though).
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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"Self taught" and "class taught" are not mutually exclusive.
Even when taking classes, one must go beyond what's being presented by an "expert", whether that expert is teaching in a classroom, online, or in a book.
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Self taught but I started with Excel macros - Excel 1 converting 100s of lotus 123 macros.
This leaves me without the technical grounding that a formal CS education would have imparted. I find this shortcoming quite frustrating as there are whole areas of c# that I don't use because of a lack of that grounding.
I do do excellent commercial work with the tools I do understand and enjoy exploring the boundaries of my knowledge so it is reasonably wide ranging these days.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Always went to school after-the-fact, just for documentation.
A little BASIC with the TI-99/4A
A little more BASIC with some sort of monster IBM at the community college (my girlfriend was going, and I had to drive her...figured I might as well take the class, too. Oddly enough, that's exactly how I joined the Army, too.)
Then Propero Pascal on the 520ST, some GEM, then nothing for a few years.
Then Turbo Pascal, Delphi, and finally C# in 2007.
Oh. And about 45 minutes of C somewhere in there.
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