How Many of You Program?

[turkey3_scratch]

This site is full of hardware geniuses, but I am totally curious how many of you program. I've been programming for a few years myself and am highly skilled especially in web design. Do you have any programming experience?

I hope this topic fits, I thought it'd be interesting to see how many hardware people know programming.

 

[eblackmo]

I do.
more than 3.5 years into development in c#.net
specifically into .net MVC websites
can handle - HTML, CSS, jquery, sql and c# of curse

Some people tell me that mvc is slowly going out of date. Is this true?
I give props to people who work with Embedded software, I dealt with microcontrollers before and it is difficult.

Nope. Something is always going out of date. I have worked for very large organizations (recently) who are still using IBM mainframes and had teams of COBOL programmers. It costs a fortune to replace those mainframes and re-implement those systems.

Although the government department I am working for now is in the process of consolidating their systems into a virtual environment it's a very costly and lengthy operation. They don't have the expertise in house either and have outsourced it. Then they are introducing SAP which is the current magic bullet that will solve everyone's problems.

Also MVC is a pattern and not a technology. There are different ways to implement it.

 

[Pinhedd]

I do.
more than 3.5 years into development in c#.net
specifically into .net MVC websites
can handle - HTML, CSS, jquery, sql and c# of curse

Some people tell me that mvc is slowly going out of date. Is this true?
I give props to people who work with Embedded software, I dealt with microcontrollers before and it is difficult.

Nope. Something is always going out of date. I have worked for very large organizations (recently) who are still using IBM mainframes and had teams of COBOL programmers. It costs a fortune to replace those mainframes and re-implement those systems.

Although the government department I am working for now is in the process of consolidating their systems into a virtual environment it's a very costly and lengthy operation. They don't have the expertise in house either and have outsourced it. Then they are introducing SAP which is the current magic bullet that will solve everyone's problems.

Also MVC is a pattern and not a technology. There are different ways to implement it.

COBOL still accounts for something like 20% of all unique code in the wild. There are a huge number of enormous and completely custom business applications that have an install base of 1.

I nearly took a job to rewrite and generalize the old COBOL code for a private investment bank in NYC. It would have been a fun challenge, but I passed it over for personal reasons.

 

[Saga Lout]

I remember looking at COBOL around the time the Navy was trying to force Fortran into my unresponsive brain. My problem with the training manuals back then was an assumption of a knowledge of mathematics I had never been taught.

I always felt those manuals were a few chapters short of a book.

 

[eblackmo]

I do.
more than 3.5 years into development in c#.net
specifically into .net MVC websites
can handle - HTML, CSS, jquery, sql and c# of curse

Some people tell me that mvc is slowly going out of date. Is this true?
I give props to people who work with Embedded software, I dealt with microcontrollers before and it is difficult.

Nope. Something is always going out of date. I have worked for very large organizations (recently) who are still using IBM mainframes and had teams of COBOL programmers. It costs a fortune to replace those mainframes and re-implement those systems.

Although the government department I am working for now is in the process of consolidating their systems into a virtual environment it's a very costly and lengthy operation. They don't have the expertise in house either and have outsourced it. Then they are introducing SAP which is the current magic bullet that will solve everyone's problems.

Also MVC is a pattern and not a technology. There are different ways to implement it.

COBOL still accounts for something like 20% of all unique code in the wild. There are a huge number of enormous and completely custom business applications that have an install base of 1.

I nearly took a job to rewrite and generalize the old COBOL code for a private investment bank in NYC. It would have been a fun challenge, but I passed it over for personal reasons.

I was working for the Australian Taxation Office and they were business critical systems. They just keep churning away. So why replace them? I guess at some point they will. I would have liked to have had a play with COBOL actually. I have never use it.

 

[Pinhedd]

I do.
more than 3.5 years into development in c#.net
specifically into .net MVC websites
can handle - HTML, CSS, jquery, sql and c# of curse

Some people tell me that mvc is slowly going out of date. Is this true?
I give props to people who work with Embedded software, I dealt with microcontrollers before and it is difficult.

Nope. Something is always going out of date. I have worked for very large organizations (recently) who are still using IBM mainframes and had teams of COBOL programmers. It costs a fortune to replace those mainframes and re-implement those systems.

Although the government department I am working for now is in the process of consolidating their systems into a virtual environment it's a very costly and lengthy operation. They don't have the expertise in house either and have outsourced it. Then they are introducing SAP which is the current magic bullet that will solve everyone's problems.

Also MVC is a pattern and not a technology. There are different ways to implement it.

COBOL still accounts for something like 20% of all unique code in the wild. There are a huge number of enormous and completely custom business applications that have an install base of 1.

I nearly took a job to rewrite and generalize the old COBOL code for a private investment bank in NYC. It would have been a fun challenge, but I passed it over for personal reasons.

I was working for the Australian Taxation Office and they were business critical systems. They just keep churning away. So why replace them? I guess at some point they will. I would have liked to have had a play with COBOL actually. I have never use it.

No I do not think that you would have 😛

If a camel is a horse designed by committee, then COBOL is a language designed by a committee comprised entirely of businessmen.

The language is fundamentally flawed yet saw widespread adoption due to one of its core objectives being to make it accessible to non-programmers, which is about as sensible as making NASA's JPL accessible to liberal arts majors.

Decision makers turned to COBOL because it was sold to them as something that they, as businessmen rather than engineers and programmers, would be able to understand. If they could understand it, they would be able to contribute in a material way. In practice. this meant interference in an attempt to be useful.

 

[McHenryB]

If you think COBOL is bad you should try RPG.

 

[eblackmo]

I do.
more than 3.5 years into development in c#.net
specifically into .net MVC websites
can handle - HTML, CSS, jquery, sql and c# of curse

Some people tell me that mvc is slowly going out of date. Is this true?
I give props to people who work with Embedded software, I dealt with microcontrollers before and it is difficult.

Nope. Something is always going out of date. I have worked for very large organizations (recently) who are still using IBM mainframes and had teams of COBOL programmers. It costs a fortune to replace those mainframes and re-implement those systems.

Although the government department I am working for now is in the process of consolidating their systems into a virtual environment it's a very costly and lengthy operation. They don't have the expertise in house either and have outsourced it. Then they are introducing SAP which is the current magic bullet that will solve everyone's problems.

Also MVC is a pattern and not a technology. There are different ways to implement it.

COBOL still accounts for something like 20% of all unique code in the wild. There are a huge number of enormous and completely custom business applications that have an install base of 1.

I nearly took a job to rewrite and generalize the old COBOL code for a private investment bank in NYC. It would have been a fun challenge, but I passed it over for personal reasons.

I was working for the Australian Taxation Office and they were business critical systems. They just keep churning away. So why replace them? I guess at some point they will. I would have liked to have had a play with COBOL actually. I have never use it.

No I do not think that you would have 😛

If a camel is a horse designed by committee, then COBOL is a language designed by a committee comprised entirely of businessmen.

The language is fundamentally flawed yet saw widespread adoption due to one of its core objectives being to make it accessible to non-programmers, which is about as sensible as making NASA's JPL accessible to liberal arts majors.

Decision makers turned to COBOL because it was sold to them as something that they, as businessmen rather than engineers and programmers, would be able to understand. If they could understand it, they would be able to contribute in a material way. In practice. this meant interference in an attempt to be useful.

Well. COBOL may have been a little bit before my time. 😉 Give me objects and patterns. Oh yeah. Also managers still think they know what's best. I just smile and nod and then go back to coding.......

 

[randomizer]

I work with my manager rather than for my manager.

 

[eblackmo]

Sounds like a utopia. Sometimes I wish we could all hold hands and dance around in a circle. I don't see it happening though. Having worked for very large organisations in both the private and public sector left me jaded and slightly cynical. There is always someone trying to steal your teams work. Because they don't have much on and they start stressing the company might decide they don't need that team anymore.

I could go on about how cut throat multi nationals actually are but I won't.

As I have discovered the public sector is no different when it comes to politics and people stabbing others in the back while trying to steal their work. The real world is not such a pleasant place. It's survival of the fittest. ;-P

 

[randomizer]

My team is so under resourced that we could do with someone else stealing our work. Nobody wants it though :lol:

 

[Ambular]

Yes and no...I've dabbled over the years in assorted BASIC versions, DOS batch files, and I do a fair bit of casual HTML coding now for various personal projects, but nothing major. Always have wanted to properly learn a real programming language.

 

[Pinhedd]

Yes and no...I've dabbled over the years in assorted BASIC versions, DOS batch files, and I do a fair bit of casual HTML coding now for various personal projects, but nothing major. Always have wanted to properly learn a real programming language.

Learn C. It'll put hair on your chest.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Assembly is what I really want to learn, but I know it'd be too much dedication and time at this point in time to learn, but I love how grounded in the hardware itself it is.

 

[McHenryB]

You only need to use assembler if you are accessing the raw hardware - basically an operating system. Even then, only very small parts of it require assembler. C is more efficient than assembler for normal user applications and will produce faster (but probably larger) programs.

 

[ElementAMD]

I do programming and some light web design on the side, going through a program to turn that into a business so I can make money on the side while I'm still a student. As much as I improve with memorization and skill when it comes to programming though, Stack Overflow is still my best friend.

 

[BrianVS]

Embedded systems and microcontrollers; FORTRAN, Assembly, some C. I still use PharLap extended DOS as it lets you take over the protected mode interrupt vector table and execute privileged instructions in-line with your code. I just setup a Panasonic CF-52 with a FAT-32 512GByte drive, 2GBytes RAM, 1.8Ghz Core 2. Dual boot DOS 7.1 and XP. Run Microchip MPLAB, Dataman device burner, Xilinx ISE on XP and the PharLap tools under DOS. Target processor is the Vortex DX.

The Microchip PICs are like programming Z80s. 8-bit assembler, 16-bit assembler- both have a lot of use in the embedded world. I also do a lot with PharLap 32-bit assembler for protected mode, either for interrupt handlers or when execution speed is critical. My RISC assembly code ran 5x faster than the code produced by the GNU C/C++ compiler for a MIPS R3000 based system. The compiler did not understand that certain segments of memory were faster than others, and could not optimize memory with regard to speed-of-access. Think of certain regions being SRAM and others being DRAM. A compiler generated "temp" being placed in DRAM slowed things down. Those are some of the tricks an assembly language programmer can make use of.

I've been writing source code using Wordstar since 1980. Find it much faster to write code using it and having the IDE's import the files.

I would like to see a programming forum, maybe split "low-level", "High-Level", "Web-Development".

 

[Mystery95]

I program in java sometimes. It is not my profession but kind of a hobby that I keep alive to stay updated with tech trends.

 

[Saga Lout]

I must give that a try; I might still be capable of forcing it into a seventy year old brain which is finding learning new stuff more difficult. On a difficulty scale of one to ten, where would you rate it?

 

[MeesterYellow]

I currently work with COBOL and JCL. I know Java, SQL, HTML, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, COBOL, JCL, XML, and have programmed some Android apps before. I've also written scripts and shell scripts on Linux before too.

COBOL imo is the easiest to learn.

 

[JQB45]

I currently work with COBOL and JCL. I know Java, SQL, HTML, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, COBOL, JCL, XML, and have programmed some Android apps before. I've also written scripts and shell scripts on Linux before too.

COBOL imo is the easiest to learn.

Can you suggest any good tutorials for JCL and Cobol for someone who already knows how to program in other languages?

 

[MeesterYellow]

I currently work with COBOL and JCL. I know Java, SQL, HTML, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, COBOL, JCL, XML, and have programmed some Android apps before. I've also written scripts and shell scripts on Linux before too.

COBOL imo is the easiest to learn.

Can you suggest any good tutorials for JCL and Cobol for someone who already knows how to program in other languages?

Oh, I learned all my programming languages from Algonquin College and more COBOL and JCL from in-house training of my workplace.

There are some videos on YouTube that teach the basics in COBOL and JCL. You could also try Lynda.com

tutorialspoint is really good for programming in general.
COBOL: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cobol/
JCL: www.tutorialspoint.com/jcl/

Other than that, I don't think there are any other good tutorials that teach JCL and COBOL.

COBOL is like writing English as you have divisions, sections, sentences, and clauses. You also have margins; which column you're supposed to write in.
JCL is kinda like DOS or OS where your jobs have step(s) which can run the requested program.

 

[kengel1021]

I play around in WordPress though I am not a programmer. I work as a bookkeeper and a certified nursing assistant.

 

[Saga Lout]

I need a nurse when I'm doing the business accounts.

Perhaps I should train as one and pay myself a bit more for havng new skills.

 

[galerecon]

I would just like everyone to know that Solidity and blockchain development is going to be a big thing in the next few years!