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OK, if we skip over my TRS-80 Basic days, and some assembler, we get to my first C program. It was a port of an assembler for a dedicated terminal, to be written in C for an IBM PC.
Now, at that time, Beyond "printf", I had know idea at all about the C standard library, particularly, I knew nothing about malloc & free, so everything was hard allocated as module level variables.
I wrote at length about it before: http://herbsutter.com/2011/10/16/your-first-c-program/#comment-3822[^]
I also dug up the source code to my SECOND major C program (circa 1989), and posted in on GitHub:
https://github.com/jamescurran/HonestIllusion/tree/master/PCT[^]
Truth,
James
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James Curran wrote: I had know idea at all
Phonetically correct, but contextually incorrect.correct: I had no idea at all
Someone else wrote "I now that..." which is both phonetically and contextually incorrect. I have no idea why I didn't feel compelled to correct him two(sic) (There is so much trampling of the English language, I had to get into the act.)
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Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away...
we technicians were allowed to learn some programming in our
free time. Fortran and punch cards of course. So me and a buddy
wrote a 'game of life' program that printed the generation
patterns on a line printer. We destroyed several trees
worth of paper. Now at 71, I still program for fun...
(Win 7, C#, intel i7, almost no printing)
73
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d@nish wrote: Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young.
You achieved the opposite:
When I wrote my first program, windows didn't exist, C++ didn't exist.
I did now what an OS was, however: I had the commented assembly listing on my desk! 
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I should say I wanted to feel young. I have no clue what you all are blabbering about. I wan't even born at that time.
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My buddy who got me started on computers had given me the book on assembler programming a PDP-8.
For two weeks I struggled, trying to understand registers, opcodes, and binary.
He and his buddy took me to the computer center and while he was off doing something on another computer, his buddy says, "Psst, wanna write a program?"
He started FOCAL and had me type
1.1 Type "HELLO." Now type "GO" and press Return.
It printed
HELLO I yelled, "THAT'S IT? That's all I have to do?!?"
And I was off to the races.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Ah, must predate the "HELLO WORLD" standard intro.
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black screen!? That's funny! When I was 14, I didn't know what a computer was. When I was a freshman in college I heard they had a computer that no student would ever get near. My junior and senior year had no room for silliness but I still got to see a computer that was booted from paper tape and you could write assembler to it. I basically flat-lined my last semester I had to drop out of a 3 point lab because I needed the time to finish my other classwork. I'd spent 4 semesters at over 20 points per and now I had to spend a whole semester for 3 points. No, I'm going to do something more. So I signed up for computer classes, something completely useless, certainly nothing that business was interested in.
Screens!!! Try typing code on cards, turning them in in the evening, getting them back the next day. The whole compile ruined by a typo.
So, I finally graduated with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and I got my first job (computer programmer) by building a fence. I spent almost a year where you turned your cards in (morning or night, made no difference) and the next day you get your printout.
Before you turned them in, you had to create them. With 60 progammers in the building and one keypunch machine we could use, we generally gave the punching to the keypunch pool where you turn it in in the morning and get it back in the evening.
2 years after starting, I transfered to people who needed more of a scientific background. The computer stored files!!!! I had a 300 baud teletype. That meant I could talk directly to the computer. I could ask it to compile and run and in a few seconds I got results. !!!screens!!!, no heat sensitive paper that at best, in theory, produced 30 characters a second, but in reality almost 2 a second, certainly faster than I could type, but not much.
Microsoft showed up over a decade after I graduated and it took them a while to come up with the windows OS.
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A few lines of Fortran in 1966 to calculate pi to 100 places on a CDC 3200 using the ArcTan expansion which I'd just learned.
Most digits were zero, so I learned something about precision.
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I was just full of awesomeness when I wrote a complete calculator emulator (complete with transcendent functions) using CDL (Computer Design Language) running on a CDC Cyber 74 mainframe back in 1977. I aced that class. The prof said he didn't believe I could pull it off it had never been done before. It did cost me an F in all my other courses that quarter but it sure was worth it! 
Edit: Oh, you said how ILLITERATE was I ... OK, I didn't yet know what a CRT terminal was. I wrote the whole thing using an 029 keypunch, card reader (of course) and line printer.
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029 keypunch? That were looxury!
We had 026s only.
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Well, at Ga Tech we had both, but the 029's were, of course, the first ones taken! 
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1986 I was 3,
wrote a batch file to display hello world,
I understood that the operating system was called disk os aka DOS because I had to load the floppy's one at a time as the computer loaded as there were no hard drives.
Everyone before the year 2000 grew up with the technology and understand it before we use it.
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Windows was something you looked through when I wrote my first program, which was in FORTRAN, punched in cards and run on an IBM/360. I knew something about the operating system and assembler and bytes and bits and Boolean. My Dad was designing a home computer with transistors on printed circuit boards and showed his design to me.
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In very old times (when I was about six years old) I didn't know what is. We had http://www.pravetz.info/pravetz-8c.html[^] (information on the page is wrong, memory was 64KB of which 16KB was reserved for ROM, so there was only 48KB usable).
There was three way to use that computer:
1. As user, you load 5.25" diskette in the floppy drive and it shows a bunch of programs - some of them games.
2. There was an interpreter for GW-BASIC language.
3. Program in machine language. Not assembly, you must write bytes in hex notation at specific address. You can list the bytes as instruction later.
What I know (at six) about mathematics was sum and subtract one-digit numbers and due to my curiosity I was taught how to sum and subtract two digit number and the method of multiply by hand (but I didn't know the whole multiplication table). I didn't know what statement, or command, or assembly, or instruction, or programming was.
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That's an easy one, didn't have to do much, just plug my ZX80 into a black and white portable TV, switch it on and there was Sinclair basic ready to start typing in.
From that point on, for the first few months at least I just copied in magazine & type your own adventure book listings, till I eventually started to learn the syntax and could type my own stuff.
Keyboard was a nightmare though.
Shawty
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That was my little girl's first reaction to my unshaved appearance
Now after two weeks without shaving, my face resembles my user name (in the euphimistic sense, obviously) more than a dog.
This is my longest attempt at a beard so far. It really is a lot of trouble isn't it? Is it supposed to itch so, or have I acquired a few fleas too?
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S u n s h i n e wrote: Is it supposed to itch so
After 20 years you will not notice that at all... 
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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Two weeks are a great shaving cycle. Not too long, not too itchy. I gotta change my profile picture here back to a beardy one... Or a picture of me at all 
Honestly, I feel sorry for men without beards (and for girls with beards) - It protects from the cold, sun burns and if I shave I feel somehow naked. I let mine grow, I join the air force by June 30th. having a beard saves me ~10 minutes of sleep in the morning because I don't have to shave
I will never again mention that Dalek Dave was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel.
How to ask a question
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Marco Bertschi wrote: I join the air force
I am so envy right now. Do you get to actually pilot any aircraft or you are going only for the dishes ? 
Microsoft ... the only place where VARIANT_TRUE != true
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It's in between
I will be in a team building radar rigs, like this one[^] for example.
I will never again mention that Dalek Dave was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel.
How to ask a question
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And I though air forces pilot air crafts. In what delusion I was.
Microsoft ... the only place where VARIANT_TRUE != true
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Air Force is a broad term, and in the Swiss jargon the Radar people (but also mechanics and airplane cannoniers) are a part of the Air Force. Simply because it would be too small if they didn't count the support people, I suspect.
Edit: To order myself back into the original topic, I did the deed and have now a beardy profile picture.
I will never again mention that Dalek Dave was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel.
How to ask a question
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