age diversity

[markman]

I was wondering who the youngest and oldest programers are out there. I bet there are some 7 years old and some 77!

[barrk]

I'm 41 okay!!! Anything else??? Yes, I'm old. I have come to accept that. I hope to get much older though! I wan't to be the oldest living VB programmer when I grow up.

[Edited by barrk on 11-06-2000 at 05:38 PM]

I am 14 years old....

and I think the youngest person on here is like 12 or something.....

[markman]

im 14 too, so thats not much. My friend started when he was 7.

[Allen Schoessler]

Started programming when he was 7? Whoa...
I'm 15. I started messing with LotusScript (it ships with Lotus SmartSuite and is similar to VBA) when I was 13. I got VB 6 for my 14th birthday, and will have been programming in it for two years on January 11.

Another thing I'm wondering... How many of you out there are 13 to 17-year-olds, and are middle children and/or second borns? Just wondering....

I just have my birthday on eleventh day. Then I'm 17. I started programming when I was 6 and got C64, though it wasn't so real (I didn't even know it was programming )

I bought VB, I think, exactly three years ago.

[paulw]

God, you guys make me feel old. I have children who are nearly older than you lot. My first computer was a ZX Spectrum and I thought I had gone to heaven when I upgraded from 16K to 48K - meant I could load all the latest tapes. Hungry Horace goes Skiing really flew *grin*

Any one else remember the Speccy?

Cheers.

Paul

[JPRoy392]

27 years here. When you guys get to be my age:

- You will grunt every time you have to get off of the couch.
- You will have to pee in the middle of the night.
- You will lose your belt that holds up your pants. It is burried underneath your beer gut.
- You will lose the hair on your head and grow it in other places that shouldn't have hair.

It sucks getting old. Don't do it.

Old Age and treachery will win out over youth and skill all
the time.

50 here.

I started in ALGOL and wrote part of an economic modelling
package for the state of NewMexico. My first private
project was an assembler based statistics package on the
Commodore Pet (remember the teeny-weeny keyboard?). It was
used to redesign a Naval Warehousing base in CA.

DerFarm

[marex]

Jeezess, who's talking about age

I'm a 54 years old freelance programmer.

Yes Paul i'm with you on the zx speccy, i was also on
the C64 and the BBC computer.
I think your age could be similar to mine.
Started in 1967's with mechanical machines and
punched cards.
In 1969 we have the ibm mainframes series 360, 370.
Programming in assembler, rpg, cobol and cics.
Later on the PC we used Basic, dBase, Foxpro.
Now it's Visual Basic, Visual Foxpro, Powerbuilder, Sql.
I'm not burned out yet and will ask a question, not starting a war.)
Wanna opinion from you folks, what is for you the best
programming language for database developing.
Give me a little explanation why it is a better language.
I want no mail bombs here and wish to limitate the language
in VB, VC++ or C++.
What i need is speed and it must run on a server with
4 workstations. Maximum size database is about 10000 records.
Well i'm curious.

Cheers
Ray

[HarryW]

For databases, I've heard that the best is CAVO (Computer Associates Visual Objects). Haven't used it meself, but I know it's all fully object oriented and stuff. No idea about speed either, but I know a lot of people use it.

[paulw]

Sorry, marex, I am only 34 (Only *sigh*). I started early. These kids today with their Gigabytes of RAM - they just don't know what it is like to get their first hard disk - 10 Meg and think that that will solve all of their problems (and it cost £750!).

As to a language, VB is excellent for rapid deployment but the database back end could be Access or FoxPro or SQL Server, depends how much you want to spend and how robust you want it.

I personally (heresy here) like Delphi, its quick, produces real EXE's and is truly Object Orientated and has been since version 1. Better still you can get older copies free and the compiler hasn't changed that much. By and large you can leverage your VB knowledge although the syntax is slightly different.

C++ and C are faster at some things but they are not as easy to develop in and if you are speed bound by the link between the database and the client, then the front-end language is not going to make that much difference.

If you really need speed, use in-line Assembler - might make you feel all nostalgic.

Good luck,

Paul.

[marex]

To Harry

Years ago I've heard of visual objects but after
consulting VB programmers they told me to use VB.

To Paul

Ooops, sorry about your age, I wished I had the same.
Yes, right, Assembler thats the way to go, but it will
take me a few months to accomplish the program.

Imagine the length of the code in Assembler.

Delphi is a pascal language I think, never used it before.
Easy to learn in a reasonable time or not?
By time I think on 3 months.

Grtz
Ray

[HarryW]

Hehe, you asked VB programmers about CAVO? Well what did yo uexpect them to say?!

[ShIzO]

23 year old man here. i started programming when i was 12 on Atari 130XE with tapedeck. my first games: River Raid, Montezuma's Revenge, Draconus etc. it took about 15 minues to load any of these games and that was in 1989.

i just can't listen to these kids saying: "this game takes too long to load, i can't wait 15 seconds...."

i wish you lived back then.


Regards,

[HarryW]

Hehe, I remember waiting 10 mins or so to load 'Yie Ar Kung Fu' on the BBC *Chuckle* Btw I'm 19. Guess you could say I started early.

[kovan]

i ***** a lot
my unreal tournament takes a while for all the servers to load
i just wanna play the stupid game, not wait
o well...

[marex]

Good reply

Well Harry, that's my problem you see.
If I asked it to another he will answer, mine is the best.
Conclusion, if your good at your own language
you will promoted it to others.
I don't think you can compare different languages
if you don't have written the same projects.
Writing small stuff for test and so ok, but serious and
big applications will be written in your favored language.

Maybe it should be better if I opened a exotic bar and
asks for IT Women.

Cheers
Ray

[CyberSurfer]

I'm 17 here...

I remember BASIC on the BBC, the Commodore 64, the Atari ST, the ZX Spectrum etc... Guess I'm just old...Remember the Joy of getting the US flag draw program to work on the Spectrum? <sigh> those were the days...

Heh, I'm lucky I had good old C64

It taught me a lot of patience and basics of basic. I made the programs all way wrong though...Trying to get rid of my bad programming habbits.

And I know quite a lot of old comps...I've a bunch of old magazines and sometimes I've tested some. Best days are gone tough...The world is going to wrong direction for me. I want to be a stand-alone programmer, not one programmer in a group of ten or more.

It's still possible, but you have to find the right
position and make it your own. Also, you can't call
yourself a programmer. That's "low class". Call yourself
a data engineer or some such rediculous BS or you'll end up
going out for coffee.


DerFarm

[zmerlinz]

i am 18 here, most of you probalby know that though, i have been programming since i was 15, started with qbasic, adn when i could afford it i went to vb

Merlin ¿

[parksie]

I started at 6 on the BBC...*sigh*...lovely computers. Anyone here remember Elite? (The original line one, of course ).

Someone must have used the AMPLE system...

[Edited by parksie on 11-08-2000 at 06:10 PM]

[HarryW]

Parksie, sounds a lot like me =] Yeah I remember that all time classic Elite, who could forget it? A damn fine game. I think the first game I played was 'Mr. T' on the BBC, loaded from a tape of course, didn't have a floppy disk drive yet Wrote my first program in BASIC at some stupidliy young age, don't remember exactly, just one of those
10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10
programs

[parksie]

We had the alphabet factory and the drawing ones. God they took ages to load .

Stryker's Run 2 on the Electron was a damn fine game too.

[marex]

To Harry

Well I see that it was a long time ago you wrote
this fantastic program on the BBC.

I've just found a small error.

Here the exact version.

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10


Have a nice day

Ray

[Cybrg641]

15 years old here. My dad is also a programmer and he is 50 years old. He mostly programs in RPG and he has been learning C++ and VB for a couple months now.

[HarryW]

Hehe, well marex I was actually a bit rebellious at a very early age and decided to just use "HELLO"

My Dad's a bit older than that. He used to mainly use Clipper (dBASE variant as far as I can tell) but in recent years has grudgingly moved on to VB, ASP/VBScript, CAVO and C++.