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Admin
Only if it's something like try {...} catch(){/bail/}
Admin
Along with agreeing with all the people who have suggested that the OP warn his brother-in-law that the scope and size of a project like Halo 3 isn't something you can just learn overnight, I'd like to add that it might have been possible to steer him towards something like FPS Creator or making simple things with UnrealScript, since that gives him quick results, but also gives him a view into the amount of work involved in making anything larger than, say, Pong.
If he does the legwork with the simple stuff and is still serious about it after a few months, then it'd be time to move him onto, say, C and SDL or Allegro.
Admin
HAH! If you think it's hard trying to explain what a programmer does, try explaining what a WEB programmer does. 9 times out of 10 they think you're a graphic designer. (grrrrr)
Admin
Hate to break it to you, C_Boo, but two trolls do not make a right.
Admin
No way! It has happened to someone else!? We did not have computer then but ever since I was about 11 and figured out by using logic and a foreign language instruction manuals pictures how to cable the VCR and set up a timer on is so one could to record a show from TV when away on my own all that kind of stuff fell on me. Imagine a pimply 13 years old girl whining why she has to put down her book to wire a second VCR so tape copies could be made or already a young adult totally dumbstruck how two men of evidently above average intelligence fail to wire a video camera, a TV and a VCR so the playback could be watched and recorded at the same time... But... perhaps without that torture we would not have turned out IT ;)
Admin
/rimshot
Admin
There are two answers to this:
If the asker is a potential boss or networking contact: YES ELSE "HELL NO"
Admin
LISP is not a functional but a multi-paradigm programming language. To the true believer, e.g. a Haskell proponent, the functional programming aspects of LISP are as impure as the OOP aspects of C++ are to a Smalltalk proponent. E.g., in a purely functional programming language, there are no assigments of any kind.
I agree, though, that functional programming is used in a lot of multi-paradigm applications written in (e.g.) LISP, C++ and OCAML.
Admin
Yeah! And another thing! This use the English alphabet thingy you folks have got going on now. That has to stop!
I say bring back hieroglyphics and use it for programming in C!
Ok. Lessee here. I've got a Sun-thingy, something that looks like Ra with STD and a flying bird. So that must be ....
Admin
The funny thing is someday that will be possible... and we'll have warp-drives, transporters, and holo-decks... And, you'll just ask Data to do it for you. Then Data will look at you and say: "What the hell do I need you for again?"
And not being able to program will be like not being able to read and write.
And your friend will have to explain what "non-programmers" are for.
Admin
You'd write an "enterprise" application in assembly?
Good luck with that.
shrug the problem that people run into with VB is the same one they run into with C. They make the core application too big. In C you break it down into smaller source files. In VB you break down large applications into self-contained components.
Frankly it's astonishing how few VB programmers really use components.
Admin
Heretic!
Admin
Ah, reminds me of when I was young and got into computers. I got ahold of an old 286, repaired it, and began using it to play old DOS games. Then my father came to me and told me it wasn't fair that I had a computer and my brother didn't, and that I should get one running for him. So I went through a great deal of trouble to get him a machine running for him, installed a few games, but he proceeded to change the BIOS settings on a regular basis because he had no clue what the hell to do with a computer otherwise, and I got stuck fixing the problem every time. From then on I became the computer wiz-kid of my family and one of my parent's friends asked me to come over and "program" her remote control for her TV.
Hehe, I remember shortly after this my brother had made a sandwich for himself and I told him to make one for me out of fairness. After he made it for me I dismantled the sandwich and told him to fix it. Good times...
Admin
Well...I mean, aren't you?
Admin
Well...I mean, aren't you?
Admin
people who use "web" and "programmer" in the same sentence piss me off. "web programmers" are little more than glorified script kiddies.
most "web programmers" i know can't even handle writing vb let alone real programs.
Admin
Literally LOL here! Brilliant!
Admin
One day, I was writing a program which frequently iterated over a matrix, so I used the usual names i and j. And then I became bored and in one subroutine called them и and жи. It worked.
Arrr... This is starting to drive me mad. VB stands on the same level of complexity as C#!!! The ole' language of the 90's is gone forever, the latest version (2008) is as suitable for building real systems as Java, C#, and <your favorite language here>. <that_was_a_rant />
Admin
I use to say I'm not. I am a programmer, not a computer specialist.
Admin
We had to quit using ours because the characters kept coming to life and destroying the house.
Admin
That's a great analogy. I might use that. But I'd add the caveat that they have to assume they're talking to someone who has no idea what a shoe is or what any of the parts are called. Then, after they get frustrated, say something like, "Now that you're starting to get the idea, consider trying to do the same thing, over the phone, with someone who only knows a few words of English. Then you'll have some idea what programming a computer is like."
Admin
May be already known, but... http://www.lifereboot.com/2007/10-reasons-it-doesnt-pay-to-be-the-computer-guy/
Just every truth of it.
Admin
Yeah, like kind of how this conversation I had once went:
Her: "So, what are you going to school for?"
Me: "I'm getting a PhD in computer science."
Her: "Oh, so you're learning how to fix computers then?"
Me: "... Well, getting a PhD in computer science is just like getting a doctoral degree in anything - you're expected to contribute something never-before-thought-of to the body of existing knowledge in that field."
Her: [pause] "Wow! So then you should be really good at fixing computers then!"
... Yes, really.
(Since then, by the way, I decided to stop at my master's in order to get out into the "real world" and start coding and earning an honest living.)
Admin
Quiz time - do you know who Edgar Codd was, what he's famous for, and why (in the light of his work) that statement is so fundamentally incorrect? A hint would be that trees are hierarchical.
Admin
Quiz time - do you know who Edgar Codd was, what he's famous for, and why (in the light of his work) that statement is so fundamentally incorrect? A hint would be that trees are hierarchical.
Admin
Well, actually, it's the Latin alphabet, so called because it's mostly the one used by the Romans (who spoke Latin and borrowed the alphabet from the Etruscans, who kinda adopted it from Greek - it's complicated).
Anglocentrism combined with ignorance is even uglier.
Admin
we should all program in lojban
Admin
Geesh, I guess people think it is easy to just go and slap something together. Last year I spoke with an individual taking a "Game Design / Development Research" course and they were agitated that they did not get to create a game in that 6 week period of time.
Also my boss thinks for a program to create a report it should take me 5 minutes to code it, but alas he over looks having to create the design of the report, the SQL involved, the data manipulation after the SQL, and then horridly enough using XSLT to transform the XML the stupid thing outputs. "Yeah, get right on that one, Chief!"
Admin
Admin
As much as a despise VB and all variants, that's actually a fundamental misunderstanding of on error resume next. What you are supposed to do is in the next statement check to see if there was an error, then handle it if there was. If you don't do the error checking it's the same as having an empty catch statement. If you don't use on error resume next what happens is the whole program will just terminate because that's default error handling in VB.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go commit ritual suicide for even knowing this...
Admin
Agreed.
I prefer Esperanto, but Lojban is nice too.
Admin
Err, that was supposed to have quoted a previous message that was referencing the on error resume next crap in VB.
Admin
But abstraction level is not "simple" vs. "serious". The whole idea of real programming is to use the right tool (i.e. the right abstraction level) for the job. If you're doing something like writing certain core parts of an operating system (e.g. the system call interface) then you pretty much have to work at the assembly level, but if you try to do a whole modern webserver+webapp that way, you'll go completely mad. So you go up abstraction levels, reducing the number of lines of code you have to write and making it easier to write correct code to achieve a particular task, modulo any language peculiarities along the way of course. Of course, as you go to more abstract programming languages you lose something. In fact, you lose a lot; there are many things you can't say and do, but in return you get the ability to express those things that you can do much more succinctly. However, this leads to the problem that sometimes you need features from one abstraction level at another, which is why good practical languages have ways to call code defined in other languages, one way or another.
And why are there different programming languages at each general level of abstraction? It's simple: not everyone agrees over which trade-offs are right to make when defining the language (and there are always trade-offs). Occasionally, you see someone who thinks that a particular language is the One True Language and tries to persuade everyone else to switch to it (I've seen it from almost all sides). When you see this, remember! It's a Real WTF?! One Size Does Not Fit All. Those who think that a single solution is possible/reasonable have never tried to do it for real...
Admin
In my experience, a good way to explain programming is to say, "It's like doing math homework, except you get paid for it."
Admin
May not be a WTF. Perhaps he was writing in pseudo-code, and was going to write the actual code later? Or more likley, the work he had handed in previously was done by someone else.
Admin
It really is (as mentioned before) the Holodeck syndrome...
When someone asks if I am good with computers, I usually answer "I know a quite a bit, about a very few things to do with computers" and follow it with "There's a lot I understand that looks Greek to many people...but there's a lot that looks Greek to me as well"
If someone pulled that "halo" business on me though, I'd probably say "If I knew enough to make Halo as a quick, easy side project, why on Earth would I be going to work every frick'n day?"
Seriously. Its a competitive world. Anything easy, can be done by anyone, and probably won't pay worth crap.
The worst though, is not people who are "dumb" with computers, but think they somehow possess that "super creativity" that everyone else lacks, and for them all they need is their magical "idea" and the rest will fall into place with little or no effort...
...that is honestly insulting when you think about it.
Hate to break it to BiL, but 1000s of middle schoolers have already come up with the idea of making "a halo game" and they still aren't making Bungie shake with fear.... and they probably have a better chance of success than BiL ever will...
Short answer to BiL: "If it was that frick'n easy, it would already be done by people who know a lot more than you"
Admin
Do you know how much trouble it is to write cross browser scripts in javascript? Do you? Or css that works on IE, FF and etc.. I have also programmed in C and C++, but I am now a web programmer (mainly php and js) and let me tell you that it's hard! Check out some of the js libs out there like prototype or jquery, or frameworks like EXT js just to see the amount of code it has!! Please stop being an ignorant arrogant stupid guy and try to learn something about web programming
Admin
Spare a thought for the people who can program but keep getting pulled back to "web programming" because what the vast majority of small-medium businesses out there want is a very specific app to be used by their employees to coordinate a task. As much as I'd like to waddle in Lisp, Python, (enter your language of preference here) the truth of the matter is that the old dynamic webpage model is the best choice most of the time. And remember that some of us have to keep track of all the little gotchas and nuisances of a myriad versions of PHP, JSP, Perl, Oracle, MySQL, etc along with all their assorted libraries. Add to this all the existing frameworks, packaging systems, differences between an installation on Windows vs Linux, etc and suddenly writing a proper program in say just Java starts to look very, very easy.
Admin
The first time, someone pushed him onto the tracks. The second and third time, his car broke down while driving across them.
Admin
Admin
I don't understand...why didn't you just start telling him...he probably would have ended the call after the first two or three weeks.
http://www.golfnorwich.com/
Admin
Vsak to hod na lamera, nie? :)
Admin
The one-and-a-half points in favour of a functional language are that
(a) Functions have first-class status. This tends to weed out MBAs, hair-dressers, and Java programmers from the employment pool; and (b) There are no, repeat no, side-effects.
Unfortunately, (b) is not compatible with real life. Which is why I, personally, prefer to program in Z80 assembler. Mmmm... self-modifying left-shifts...
Admin
I really enjoy your site.
I'm a programmer, but I'm smart enough to recognize I'm a hack. What I lack in formal training I make up for with "grit".
I've had these "are you good at computers" calls before.
Reminds me of a popular get-rich method: buy lottery ticket, win lottery, write book about how to get rich
Admin
Does any "web service?"
Unless it's written in VB4, of course.
Admin
Spoken (written >_>) like someone's whose only Javascript experience falls into the Fisher Price ages 1-3 category.
...someone previously said two trolls don't make a right, I beg to differ.
Admin
Have you considered Reading Comprehension 101? It's quite useful in many walks of life.
Admin
You got it wrong. Macs are petty
Admin
I want to know what the brother-in-law does for a living. Then you could turn it back on him. If he's a mechanic, tell him to explain over the phone how you can build a car like a Ferrari. Even better if he's a doctor...
Admin
No offense, but you sound as stupid as the guy in the WTF. You know, not all "web programmers" write Javascript and CSS. I'm a "web programmer" (actually I prefer "web developer") and I haven't used JS in anger in the last 2 months (and no, I haven't been slacking off). Hell, I spent an entire year at my last job just working on a single VB.NET module (oh noes, VB in an enterprisey app!!!1one) without seeing any HTML.
There is quite a bit more to web development than Javascript, CSS and HTML. Believe it or not, there has to be something behind all that stuff to make it pull from a database or whatnot and produce the result. Or did you reall think that there's a file called "Could-You-Explain-Programming-Please.aspx" on TDWTF's server that's hand-edited HTML?
What you're saying is a bit like slamming a photographer for doing weddings. Yeah, there are some hacks out there that don't know what they're doing that do them, but just because someone does it doesn't mean they're a hack. It also doesn't mean you can't be skilled at it, or make it into an art form. You gotta pay the bills, and unfortunately, there just aren't that many jobs out there for Lisp or Haskell programmers. There are, however, plenty of .NET and Java positions.