Coder In The House

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Shayla

Shayla

WOW Framer
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Apr 5, 2008
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Last year, Hubby bought several big books and learned to code. He learned MySQL and PHP, (with occasional tips from computer-whiz-son). Last week, another book landed on the porch, and now, he's learning HTML. Says he, "Learning a computer language is 'like a puzzle, and I enjoy puzzles'." I'm clueless about it, but am so proud of him for learning all of this. He started out with Fortran on punch cards, and forty-some years later is still having fun.

This thread is for a chat about whatever you computer people like to say. Back to my sticks and rocks....
 
Ya, well the programmer of yesterday is way different from the coder of today.

I thought I knew systems, until guys like Labbe start talking in whatever language they're using. I don't have a clue.
 
Yeah, I think this Object-Oriented stuff is being pushed by the same folks who wanted to flouridate municipal water systems. (They get mention in the movie Dr. Strangelove and in John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces.)
 
tedh said:
Ya, well the programmer of yesterday is way different from the coder of today.

I thought I knew systems, until guys like Labbe start talking in whatever language they're using. I don't have a clue.
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I started during the days of punch cards, and the computers I used in college had printers instead of screens. They didnt have computers in my high school until my senior year, and it was just ONE for the whole school to share. :) I'm old, too. rofl
 
Lol! Congratulations on keeping up!
 
Dirk said:
Yeah, I think this Object-Oriented stuff is being pushed by the same folks who wanted to flouridate municipal water systems. (They get mention in the movie Dr. Strangelove and in John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces.)
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Don't give up on OOPs. I've been using OOPs since the early 90s. Once it sinks in, you will think its the greatest thing since sliced bread.

You should get a cheap website to play with. You should be able to get a cheapie with PHP, MySQL and JS for 10 smakeroos a month or less.
 
There you go again! I'm on a different planet.
 
Lol, you can do a lot with Wordpress in one window and and W3Schools in another.
 
Larry Peterson said:
Don't give up on OOPs. I've been using OOPs since the early 90s. Once it sinks in, you will think its the greatest thing since sliced bread.

You should get a cheap website to play with. You should be able to get a cheapie with PHP, MySQL and JS for 10 smakeroos a month or less.
Click to expand...
If you are just learning and want to save $10 per month for a web hosting account, you can install XAMPP personal web server locally on your PC that supports PHP, MySQL.

You can then install wordpress on XAMMP and play with it.
 
Mike Labbe said:
I started during the days of punch cards
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My alma mater couldn't see fit to change the ribbons on the keypunch machines, so the type on the colored strip at the top of the cards was unintelligible. We learned to read the characters by decoding the little, rectangular holes. Seems like it was two BCD columns for each character, but it's been a little while ...

Thanks for all the advice from you youngsters! I've got xampp on my tower, and FTP access to a private server. I'm hoping to get a simple web app done without having to dive in to javascript and the rest of the froofy stuff - meat and potatoes, not sushi and crepes. By the way, the real name for php uses the first two letters as the misspelled beginning of a common gerund inappropriate for a family forum like the Grumble.
 
Punch Card Story:

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Back in the mid-to-late '60s I was hanging out with a girl who I later married. Her father was in his '70s, a quiet guy who was a building caretaker.

One day he saw one of those punch card wreaths, and with the volume of punch cards he saw going into the garbage of his building, made one. Then more. And he sold them. Then he actually got the patent for it. Right across Canada. Then he went out and got orders for them from Canadian Tire, the big national tire and housewares store. Then he designed and ordered octagonal boxes, tons of blank punch cards, and made stapling jigs to assemble the wreaths.. Then he turned his house into a wreath factory, with all of us pitching in. This went on for a year or two, until he exhausted himself. Managed to buy a new VW station wagon.
 
Dirk said:
My alma mater couldn't see fit to change the ribbons on the keypunch machines, so the type on the colored strip at the top of the cards was unintelligible. We learned to read the characters by decoding the little, rectangular holes. Seems like it was two BCD columns for each character, but it's been a little while ...

Thanks for all the advice from you youngsters! I've got xampp on my tower, and FTP access to a private server. I'm hoping to get a simple web app done without having to dive in to javascript and the rest of the froofy stuff - meat and potatoes, not sushi and crepes. By the way, the real name for php uses the first two letters as the misspelled beginning of a common gerund inappropriate for a family forum like the Grumble.
Click to expand...

If you're going to use JavaScript, using a framework will make your life a littler lot easier. It's been a while since I've done JavaScript so there might be a better framework out there that might be better than the one I used a few years ago (JQuery). A quick google seems to point to Angular as the better option today.
 
Boy, make me feel really old. College had a vacuum tube mainframe donated. Punchcards were 40 columns of round holes. Lucky for us, the campus storage building burned to the ground before anyone wasted time trying to resurrect the machine.

In the real world, we controlled several oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico with a CDC1700 until the mid 80s. Not an integrated circuit in the mainframe. Everything was loaded via paper tape or punch cards. 32 KB of 32 bit core memory. Booting it was a lengthy sequence of push buttons and toggle switches. It 'talked' via microwave & UHF radio links to the platform telemetry units @ 300 baud after a major upgrade from 75 baud. For security, instead of mark/space tone frequencies, it used 3 frequencies and inserted a 'center tone' between each mark/space. We were in hog heaven when the telemetry printers got upgraded to 1200 baud.
 
In the early '70s I was working for the federal Public Works department, as a maintenance programmer. Any time a system crashed, I had to jump. We managed all federal properties across the country as well as Crown assets. So any time the prime minister went on a trip and his wife bought something for the PM's residence, I updated the federal information systems. I can remember taking a bus with cases of punch cards from my office to Parliament Hill, where the government's 360 was located in a basement.

But the real fun was in the '80s, when I was at a dinner party with a Parliamentary news reporter. He was drunk, and regaled us with the story of when the PM at the time, having announced his retirement, backed two huge moving vans up to the PM's residence, emptied it of everything in it, and moved it all to his new residence. The incoming PM spent the first night of his new job sleeping,on a camp cot. As I listened to this story my kind went back to all those assets that the people of Canada owned, and where they ended up.

I just don't know if they were ever paid for.
 
And to continue the stories of politicians, as my career progressed, I moved into management, and encountered dozens of politicians who moved into government after their political careers ended. With one exception, they were all less than honest.
 
We don't have any of those problems in the US. Every one of our politicians scrupulously adheres to the highest standards of fiduciary conduct.
 
Dirk said:
We don't have any of those problems in the US. Every one of our politicians scrupulously adheres to the highest standards of fiduciary conduct.
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Made me choke on my coffee. rofl
 
The lesson here is to be nice to your systems people. They know where the skeletons are buried.
 
Dirk said:
We don't have any of those problems in the US. Every one of our politicians scrupulously adheres to the highest standards of fiduciary* conduct.
Click to expand...

Although sometimes, it's spelled differently.
 
That's not what my customers say.

Excuse me a minute...............................


Had to find my walker.





Old? I have a 19-year-old daughter. She and my two boys keep me from aging.
 
Since we are old, time for some old programmer memes.

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a70851a27b06f0af9d4a2affb8b936b0.jpg


b15aa1f2035acb6ea1c0a4cd57b2600c.jpg


BTW, one the last image, I'm the first one.
 
Know what?

If had my choice I would have remained a programmer. Much more fun than management.

Management sucks. But it sure does pay.
 
So does vacuuming.

If you're paid to vacuum.
 
If you're a professional vacuumer.

Or even just under the table.

(which is where the crumbs are)
 
tedh said:
If had my choice I would have remained a programmer.
Click to expand...
So ... you'd rather be Dilbert than the pointy-haired boss?
 
Big time!
 
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