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Wow, had to think back.
It was summer break and I was in fifth grade. The school was offering special summer programs. My family was struggling to make end's meet and so dad was working extra hours and weekends. Summer vacations were not even thought of (maybe a day trip to a fair or the Jersey shore). There was a computer course offered by one of the large computer companies of the day (I think it was DEC). The cost was low enough that we could afford it. It turned out to be a course in Machine Level Language programming. We covered the logical parts of the computer (arithmetic, logic, control, input, output). We learned the binary language of the opcode instructions. How to structure a solution to a problem as a series of input, process, output blocks. How to code branches by calculating the number of bytes to jump to reach another part of the code. This was real head scratching ones and zeros stuff, but hell, what did we know. We were just kids making a machine do things. If was fun! The person teaching the course was the head of a research division located in a business park about an hour from our school. So as a treat (for the last class), he arranged to have a van pick us up and take us to the research facility to get a tour of the latest machines they were working on and to bring a small program we wrote (limited to no more than 100 steps of machine code) to be run at the facility. While he took us on a tour of the latest machines (big bulky desk like machines that had attached drum storage that looked like a refrigerator turned on it's side). These machines could do word processing, spreadsheets, accounting journal entries, and other business functions without the need for a bulky mainframe. They were on the bleeding edge of technology. He then took us to a special part of the building where they had an old vacuum tube computer in a display museum. He crossed his fingers and had the old computer powered up.(tubes had a tendency to fail regularly). The machine had 4K of memory and a punched tape reader and teletype output. The operator used switches on the front to load the paper tape reading program (about a dozen commands). While we were touring an assistant had keyed our programs into the paper tapes. I was nervous as they took my program on tape and fed it into the reader. It read half of it and then stopped. The operator took the tape out, reentered the reader program through the switches and tried again. This time it read the entire tape. The tubes in the machine seemed to flicker a bit and the teletype began to print out the result. I checked the number and it matched my hand calculation of the expected result. The gusting cold air, the heat of the glowing tubes, the smell of hot wiring, the electrical hum. It was sheer magic. I was hooked.
I would not get to work with another computer until my freshman year of college.
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Pretty much same as Richard: every time I do something else than coding I thank gods I didn't have to earn a living doing that. Would have been painful for me and those around me 
Mircea
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honey the codewitch wrote: I was building physical things
I am in the embedded automotive world -> This is how I am part of both worlds 
I did not want to do SW only for web or desktop app - requirements are much more fun to implement when you do not have endless memory and CPU, have to make something move in an expected way and without killing anybody.
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That's kind of where I am with embedded except I'm focused on the software end, but I at least like that I work with hardware engineers (mechanical and electrical) and that my software touches those things they produce. Even if I'm not making the hardware for work, I enjoy the end result - the physical product.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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honey the codewitch wrote: Why do you code?
Money, white-collared, intellectually challenging at times. And pushing the "Run" button shows the results.
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I code frankenapps
(and my dream when I was an irresponsible teenager, which is actually still my dream as an irresponsible adult, is to have an RX4 with a bridge-ported 13B rotary. One day maybe...)
cheers
Chris Maunder
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honey the codewitch wrote: Why do you code?
It's all I've ever known to be passionate about.
I actually gave this some thought a while back, and the closest thing that ever came to mind is, if I wasn't coding, maybe I'd be into woodworking. But I've always had an irrational fear of heavy machinery with exposed blades that present plenty of opportunities to lose a finger (or worse). Eliminate these two options...and I honestly don't know what I'd be doing. My dad was an auto mechanic, and his dad before him, but I've never seen myself doing that. And, the job's completely different nowadays than it was at the time my dad retired nearly 20 years ago. He mentioned once or twice I made the right choice...
Fortunately one can make a good living doing what I've found to be passionate about. That's a blessing, and I fully realize most people spend their lives being unable to do that.
It can also be a curse - mixing work with hobbies, I believe, has the potential to lead you to burn out, and then you end up hating both. Then how do you get out of that rut?
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So much of this is relatable.
dandy72 wrote: It's all I've ever known to be passionate about.
Me basically, at least after I found it.
dandy72 wrote: Eliminate these two options...and I honestly don't know what I'd be doing.
The only thing I'm qualified to do is write code, and consult around that. Heh. Otherwise I'd be asking you if you'd like fries with that post.
dandy72 wrote: My dad was an auto mechanic, and his dad before him
My biological dad was a toolmaker - he crafted tools to do things like stamp sheet metal into various forms. It requires a surprising amount of math. I inherited a lot of his intellectual leanings, but not the math. Definitely his penchant for creating, and probably where I get my interest in metalwork.
dandy72 wrote: Fortunately one can make a good living doing what I've found to be passionate about. That's a blessing, and I fully realize most people spend their lives being unable to do that.
I can't tell you how many times I've stewed on that, both cheerfully and a little guiltily at times, particularly since sometimes I feel like I didn't "earn" it having never attended uni or even college.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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honey the codewitch wrote: My biological dad was a toolmaker - he crafted tools to do things like stamp sheet metal into various forms. It requires a surprising amount of math. I inherited a lot of his intellectual leanings, but not the math. Definitely his penchant for creating, and probably where I get my interest in metalwork.
I can definitely see the parallels between that, and what you do.
honey the codewitch wrote: sometimes I feel like I didn't "earn" it having never attended uni or even college.
I did 3 years of college, but genuinely felt like as soon as I graduated, pretty much all of that knowledge was obsolete. I mean, some of the theory helped as that tends to remain a constant, but in general...meh. I'm not entirely against the idea floating around, nowadays, that not everybody needs a college education. More power to you, I say, seeing how great you are at it.
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Thanks. I appreciate that because I tell myself I'm good at it as a pep thing, but I often don't believe it, except right after I've done something really cool. 
I do like that I've avoided all the financial debt and baggage that comes with a formal education but there are holes in my knowledge.
And the culture in embedded seems to lean heavily on credentials, and I lose a little sleep over that. "You don't belong in this arena" gets too much play in my head. 
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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We all see something in ourselves that others aren't even aware of.
Ignore those voices nobody else hears. 
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honey the codewitch wrote: Why do you code?
I'm too lazy to be a farmer, too clever to be a banker, and too honest to be a politician. What else is left?
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I could have really enjoyed metalwork - despite being lazy my urge to create is stronger. 
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Adding, I don't want to get political regarding what's happening where you live so this is all I'll say: I'm glad to see you well and hang in there. 
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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I like to automate things for myself or others that otherwise might be drudgery.
That and it can entertain me for hours and hours per day as I'm obsessive.
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because i was not a good enough physicist or mathematician upon completing BA Mathematics and MS Physics and because my MS thesis was a FORTRAN code and because my "advisor" at IIT laughed at me when i informed him i wished to enter a EE BS program having previously completed said programs elsewhere . he insisted i enroll in EE MS program . nonsense . i would have been lost . also because my physics instructor in undergrad suggested i enroll in an MS Physics program . i was happy pushing buttons on IBM System 3 at the time until i got the stupid idea of applying for a technician job at an engineering firm which i was accepted to having answered by quite the coincidence the very same technical interview question i posed to myself only the week prior .
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honey the codewitch wrote: Why do you code?
I watched Gemini and Apollo launches when I was little. Somehow I knew I didn't have The Right Stuff to be an astronaut. I was fascinated however by the views of Mission Control. All the panels with buttons that did Important Things. I wanted to learn how to do that.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I can relate to that.
At my current employer some years I met up with one of the New York office's developers, a knowledgeable "grey beard" if you will. Over beers we chatted about our backgrounds. Turned out he'd been a programmer on Apollo, working on the flight computer software.
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honey the codewitch wrote: rotary/Wankel engines and such.
Then no doubt you'd be interested in what this company is creating: LiquidPiston | Reinventing the Rotary Engine[^]
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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That's interesting. I assumed rotary was dead tech outside of prop planes just because it needs a lot more development before it's competitive with traditional piston engines in road cars. And road cars are going electric, which frankly is lower maintenance and potentially better performing than the equiv gas car pound for pound.
So I wonder where this tech will go.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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1970 last year of school. They took us to a vocational guidance show and at one stall there was an IBM golfball typewriter printing Mona Lisa. I couldn't believe it. I stuck around and got a chance to play tic-tac-toe with the computer and also saw the golfball do a Noddy act nodding its "head" up and down and round and round. I was hooked. I never saw the rest of the show. I still have an IBM golfball on my desk and I still earn my living coding 53 years later.
Never regretted it and I always remember a quote which says find a job you enjoy and you will never work in your life.
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Everything I built as a kid was a bit rubbishy because I didn't have the tools or materials to build professional-looking stuff. With code, I could build stuff that looked as good or even better than the professional efforts.
PS - I "invented" the Deltic engine when I was about fourteen and then realised with huge sadness that it was impossible - one pair of pistons would always be moving in the same direction as each other. I still think that the Napier solution to that problem is one of the most imaginative pieces of engineering ever. There's an hypnotic animation at http://www.3d-meier.de/tut16/Napier/Ani1.html
<°}}}>«<
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Thanks!
Your link tags are encoded, but it's easy enough for me to copy them into a browser.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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The deltic is a wonderful piece of engineering. I can still hear, in my mind's ear, the sound of the locomotives on the East coast main line.
When I was at school, I drew up a sketch of an inline 4 cylinder engine where the four crank pins were 90 degrees apart. My tech master said it would never work; the vibrations would shake the engine apart.
Yamaha seemed to make it work with the cross plane engines such as in the R1 ...
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Notwithstanding I share your interest in weird engines, I first got the bug, to coin a phrase, at school - I'd have been 12 or 13. Read up books, used the school's timeshare terminal to learn a dialect of BASIC to make it do things, then went off in 1980 to Uni, to flunk a course in Electrical engineering, having been accepted as an apprentice by EMI in 1979. Learnt a teensy bit of FORTRAN on that course.
Had to get a job to make ends meet, so took a job at a small local company assembling specialist calculators. Fast forward a few years and I'm now troubleshooting them with a 'scope and I have an assistant who is doing an OU course in computing, and gives me a copy of UCSD Pascal. I start writing programs to emulate the financial calculators we're selling - I'm building "things" again. Then the company decides this might be worth pursuing and we hire a very mathematically adept programmer (with whom I'm still friends) in the mid 80's. He suggests we drop Pascal and go C based, which we do. Late 89 we both leave and join a software house which writes server based financial data delivery and calculation software. We're building "things" that talk to each other. Early 90s the company gets in financial trouble and some of the team including me are hired by one of their customers. We're building bigger "things" that talk to each other around the world. And I'm still there, building "things" and also building tiny things with Arduinos and so on from time to time for fun.
A lot of this is "making things do things" satisfaction. Which feeds in to my current hobby, amateur theatre, where we make really quite big things do things for the entertainment of others.
Still like engines, though ...
modified 26-Oct-23 6:50am.
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