Tuesday, 15 July 2008

Meme-ishness

I have apparently been memed.

How old were you when you started programming?
18 - first year of university.

How did you get started in programming?
I was studying business analysis and decided I should do Programming 101 so that "when I had to work with programmers I would have some idea what they were talking about."
Turned out that programming is a lot more fun that business analysis, so I ended up changing majors.

What was your first language?
Object Pascal, using Delphi.

What was the first real program you wrote?
I can clearly remember our very first programming lab, after only one lecture. We built a little winforms app - just a window with one button in the middle, but it minimised, and maximised, and, when you clicked the button, the background changed colour!
I was so exicited...

What languages have you used since you started programming?
Object Pascal, Java, Haskell, Prolog, C#, various escapades into scripting and general madness in Access. (Ooops, forget I admitted that... I know nothing about Access...)

What was your first professional programming gig?
Intergen! Wait, I'm still here...

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?
Definitely -and sooner!

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
Keep asking questions. Especially ones that start with "Why..." That way you get to understand why things are done, rather than just how, and you're in a better position to suggest new ideas or to implement existing ones properly and to your benefit.

What’s the most fun you’ve ever had… programming?
Playing with low-level graphics is probably both the most frustrating and the most fun thing I've done. Notably one I've done lately which takes a set of locations and routes between them for a text-based adventure game, then draws a map of the environment. (Yeah, I know, I'm a geek)

I'll tag:
JD (who's already been tagged, but hasn't done a post yet)
Duncan
Nate