Any programmers out there

[Kangum]

i used c++ for several years then sort of lost interest in it. picked it back up and its slowly all comming back to me. I still have alot of practicing to do, but having way more fun then the first time. It also seems like I have a better understanding of things then the first time. maybe because there is no rush?

anyone do any programming. what tool / language to you use.

[ChadTower]

Several of us are professional software developers.

Most professionals aren't limited to a tool or language.  If you learn to program, that is learn your various paradigms (object oriented, procedural, recursive, etc), and your various algorithms (sorts, searches, error capture/handling, etc), then you're going to be able to pick up pretty much any language in a short amount of time.

[Kangum]

Design patterns fascinate me. I picked up Design patterns Elements of object oriented software. i really wish they would come out with another book. I also have John Vlissides pattern hatching book.  the more examples i come across the better

[Dartful Dodger]

Notepad is the main programming tool I use.

[Samstag]

Notepad is the main programming tool I use.

Nedit and VI here, with makefiles and gdb.  But I want to learn to use butterflies.

[Guaranos]

What do you want to program?  If you're looking to be a professional, doing applications and such at companies, I'd look at things like C#, C++, any web languages, etc.  If you want to whip up little games and stuff with minimal effort, and don't necessarily care about doing so in a big business context, I'd look at things like BlitzMax/Blitz3d, Torque, and XNA.

[CCM]

I still use lots of COBOL..

[boykster]

I'm a big fan of C# and php.....

I'll admit to using Visual Studio 2005 (currently) to build web apps / services / etc in C#, and any old text editor to build php / perl stuff.

C++ is nice, as is Java, but there's something I really like about C#.

[ahofle]

C++ is nice, as is Java, but there's something I really like about C#.

With a few exceptions, C# is pretty much a direct ripoff of java. 
namespace = package, using = import, etc. 
I found it quite easy to learn coming from java hehe.

In the past I've programmed in C, C++, Smalltalk, Java, and most recently C#.  That's not including scripting languages or Basic-like tools like Delphi/Power Builder.  I'd have to say Smalltalk was by far my favorite language.

[boykster]

Oh, I'm well aware of C#'s pedigree.....

I have several hardcore Java developer friends who REALLY like C# - and not just the MS .NET implementation.

[Kangum]

C++ is nice, as is Java, but there's something I really like about C#.

With a few exceptions, C# is pretty much a direct ripoff of java. 
namespace = package, using = import, etc. 
I found it quite easy to learn coming from java hehe.

In the past I've programmed in C, C++, Smalltalk, Java, and most recently C#.  That's not including scripting languages or Basic-like tools like Delphi/Power Builder.  I'd have to say Smalltalk was by far my favorite language.

ohh smalltalk. where did you start your smalltalk programming. I havent seen to many books on the subject.


my towerof geekdom

[ChadTower]

I like to stick with lightweight text editors that have profiles.  Scite is a current favorite.  Notepad+ isn't bad either.  I usually won't bother with a heavy IDE unless there is a compelling reason, but when I do, it is mostly Eclipse in recent years.

[HaRuMaN]

I use the CRiSP editor at work.   Mainly for a thermodynamic modeling program we use that is heavily based on FORTRAN.

[J_K_M_A_N]

I usually program RPG-III with my punch cards.

I actually went to school for programming back in 92. Crappy school. Old computers and old languages. I learned Cobal, RPG-III, Turbo Pascal and C on an old mainframe and some IBM XT's with 640k of RAM and text only monitors. That was back when 486's were out and windows was pretty common. When I got out of school, I became a driver for a plumbing and heating company. What a waste of money.

Now I just hack on Visual Basic 6. I haven't had time to make the jump to .NET and from what I have seen, I don't really have the time to. I mostly program for myself but I have written a couple of programs for work. If I showed some of you guys the code, I am sure you would laugh at me. But the programs work and my co-workers think I am a genius so...

J_K_M_A_N

[ahofle]

ohh smalltalk. where did you start your smalltalk programming. I havent seen to many books on the subject.

That was a language I learned at my first job (Fedex) in the 90s.  They brought in a trainer and everything.  I can't remember what books I have on it, but I'll look.  As a programmer, I've never been as productive in any other language.  The syntax is SO simple and there aren't a million keywords or a bunch of 'special' types that aren't true objects (primitive int vs Integer class, etc).  It's too bad it lost steam once Java came around.

You may want to check out C# as it's quite a bit easier than C++ for a new programmer (no memory to clean up, pointers, etc).  There is even a free version of Visual Studio you can download.  Or use Java which is entirely free.  I don't miss C++ at all.

Oh, and I use Eclipse as my IDE, or Visual Studio if doing C# work.

[Ed_McCarron]

I usually program RPG-III with my punch cards.

Heh.  In college, I learned Fortran 77 on a DEC Cyber930.

Now, I do programming for control systems.  Migrated from ladder, to some other proprietary language, and now IEC 61131-3 standard code.

Does anyone actually use what they learned in college?

[ChadTower]

Does anyone actually use what they learned in college?

Very much so.  Not the specific languages that were used at the time, as that was C++, various forms of assembly, and a couple forms of LISP... but the langauges were just the means to the end of teaching software design and general programming skill.  Those classes could have been taught in any number of other languages and been the same.

[CheffoJeffo]

Does anyone actually use what they learned in college?

Languages, nope ... FORTRAN, COBOL, DTRAN, Pascal, PL/1, APL, J.

Woof -- I am getting old.

[ChadTower]

If it helps make you feel less old, I did my first real programming in TI99 Basic.

Of course, I was in third grade.   

[Ed_McCarron]

Does anyone actually use what they learned in college?

Languages, nope ... FORTRAN, COBOL, DTRAN, Pascal, PL/1, APL, J.

Woof -- I am getting old.

Wow, forgot about Pascal.  I had that for the //c 1988-ish.

Chad:  I'll see your TI and raise you a VIC-20.  Third grade sounds about right.

[boykster]

Does anyone actually use what they learned in college?

considering I didn't learn to program in college, that'd be a no on that front

I'm not a huge fan of the Visual Studio IDE (slow bloated), but where I work now is heavily into porting things to the .NET environment and we're building a lot of data infrastructure using datasets/datatable/tableadapters and whilst you CAN build those xml files manually in an editor, its a lot easier to build and test them in the UI.

I prefer a good text editor for most other programming....I've not used scite but have seen it, I may check it out for another project I'm starting....back in my perl days I used emacs and pico a lot...

[ChadTower]

I miss Emacs.  I loved it in college - used to write modules for it in elisp.  You don't see it very often in corporate environments anymore.  It is considered a security risk by many admins, right or wrong.  Same with PERL.  I used to spend 8-9 hours a day just in PERL.  Where I work now we're specifically forbidden from using it.

[CCM]

I still use PERL for some quick adhoc programming...  Can't beat it for string manipulation.  We don't use it in production, but I use it for testing, conversions, etc...

[boykster]

PERL is a great little language for string manipulation; it's heavily used in bioinformatics dealing with genomic and proteomic data since that data is essentially gigantic text streams....

[Dartful Dodger]

I learned Japanese and American Sign Language in college.

I went to an art school for animation.  3D animation was what I was hoping to do.  I got a job animating with Director.  At the time shockwave was just fancier animated gif.  Director evolved into a multimedia program, I evolved with it, then I out grew it.

[Samstag]

I do most of my work in FORTRAN.  I didn't learn it in college, because way back then FORTRAN was considered obsolete.

[ErikRuud]

Does anyone actually use what they learned in college?

Languages, nope ... FORTRAN, COBOL, DTRAN, Pascal, PL/1, APL, J.

Woof -- I am getting old.

Wow, forgot about Pascal.  I had that for the //c 1988-ish.

Chad:  I'll see your TI and raise you a VIC-20.  Third grade sounds about right.

And I'll see your VIC-20 and raise you a Commodore PET!  It was 1981 and I was in 11th grade.

I taught myself BASIC during high school.

In college I learned COBOL, Pascal, and C.

Professionally I have used COBOL(with CICS), Java, Java Script, Korn Shell scripts, and SQL for DB2/UDB.  Most of my current work is done using "Business Intelligence" tools.  (Informatica and Hyperion).

[ChadTower]

Informatica is a pain in ---my bottom---.  I cannot stand platforms that require you use an internal source control mechanism.  Makes corporate platform management a serious chore from a configuration management perspective.  I go all Lewis Black whenever a new Informatica project pops up around here.

I started to learn TI Basic so I could make the speech synthesizer say dirty things.  That was hiliarious in third grade.  Still is in that TI99 voice.

[ErikRuud]

At least Informatica has version control. 

Hyperion has none and as far as I know there is no good way to use external source control.  You can have versions of an object, so you can rollback changes, but there is no check-in/check-out.

I remember having fun with SAM (Software Automatic Mouth) on my Commodore 64.  The voice was pretty close to the TI99 voice.  With the right settings you could get it to sound like a robot version of the Swedish Chef.

[ChadTower]

At least Informatica has version control. 

Hyperion has none and as far as I know there is no good way to use external source control.  You can have versions of an object, so you can rollback changes, but there is no check-in/check-out.

I don't want a platform to have its own version control.  That is your configuration management/release engineering team's responsibility.  The dept should have a repository of record, almost always a formal source control application, that handles version control of all application artifacts across the board.  When you have one or two rogue platforms actually requiring their own version control system is makes them nearly impossible to keep proper software lifecycle consistency on those platforms relative to everything else.  Rogue platforms are bad hen we're talking lifecycle management across a whole slew of platforms. 

AFAIK, Informatica does allow you to export artifacts for proper external storage, but it also requires you to use internal source control in order to import within its own environments.  We have some Hyperion here but I can't remember the exact mechanics.  In order to migrate an artifact from one environment to another, if there is no internal source control, it has to have an export/import ability.  Is that how it works?

I apologize for going off a bit, this is something that makes my life harder on a regular basis.  Platforms that force internal version control are a close first over platforms that do not provide reasonable command line interfaces for artifact management and common functions like service start/stop and platform bouncing.  Frustratingly when a platform has one problem it usually has the other too.

[ErikRuud]

AFAIK, Informatica does allow you to export artifacts for proper external storage, but it also requires you to use internal source control in order to import within its own environments.  We have some Hyperion here but I can't remember the exact mechanics.  In order to migrate an artifact from one environment to another, if there is no internal source control, it has to have an export/import ability.  Is that how it works?

I apologize for going off a bit, this is something that makes my life harder on a regular basis.  Platforms that force internal version control are a close first over platforms that do not provide reasonable command line interfaces for artifact management and common functions like service start/stop and platform bouncing.  Frustratingly when a platform has one problem it usually has the other too.

Yes, you could save the objects in an external library but there is no mechanism to ensure that an object is properly checked out and back in before I publish it in a new environment or overwrite an existing version.  I could publish one version and you could come in right after me and publish your version and wipe out any changes that I made.

Hyperion V8 is a nightmare when it comes to starting/stopping services or bouncing the servers.  It's also bad at giving proper diagnostics when problems occur.  I can't even tell you how many times I have seen "Unknown Error" or "Internal Error"

It's also very bad from a system management/load balancing/workflow control standpoint.

Hopefully Hyperion System 9 is better, but so far the documentation I have seen does look promising.

Hyperion is very good at the reporting/analysis/Business Intelligence that it was initially designed for.

[ChadTower]

I could publish one version and you could come in right after me and publish your version and wipe out any changes that I made.

If it is a controlled instance then only specific people will have the ability to make changes.  Those people will be your CM team or similar - and they are responsible for all audit trails and artifact management at that level.  They won't go in and just wipe out changes without reason.  That's their whole job.  It's not up to the platform designers to implement software lifecycle practices, and when they try, they only make it much more difficult for proper practices to be put into place in a heterogenous environment.  This is the type of stuff I do for a living.

Hyperion V8 is a nightmare when it comes to starting/stopping services or bouncing the servers.  It's also bad at giving proper diagnostics when problems occur.  I can't even tell you how many times I have seen "Unknown Error" or "Internal Error"

It's also very bad from a system management/load balancing/workflow control standpoint.

Hopefully Hyperion System 9 is better, but so far the documentation I have seen does look promising.

Hyperion is very good at the reporting/analysis/Business Intelligence that it was initially designed for.

That's a pain in the butt.  Hopefully when evaluating platforms, the technology architects take that stuff into consideration.  A platform can be fantastic at what it does on the surface but if it doesn't provide backend simple services that make development and deployment practical than it may as well be tossed into the garbage.  Sadly, that input rarely happens, and I get these nonmanageable platforms jammed down my gob having to write custom management tools every time.

[ErikRuud]

In this case my team is responsible for almost everything.  Design, development, deployment, as well as production and user support.  We are a small team which makes it easy for us to stay on top of the change control issues.

I don't know what kind of review process went on before these products were chosen.  I do know that they were reccomended by an outside consulting firm.

[shmokes]

I took a single programming class in undergrad.  We used Java.  I programmed a picture of a house and made the sun rise.  Also I programmed a picture of a truck that drove across the screen.  These pictures looked like they were drawn by a four-year-old.  Also, I wrote some simple loop routines that would search for customer files in a database. 

That's pretty much the extent of my experience, and it is as far as I will ever go.   

[boykster]

In this case my team is responsible for almost everything.  Design, development, deployment, as well as production and user support.  We are a small team which makes it easy for us to stay on top of the change control issues.

Thats essentially the environment I've worked in my entire career; often with one person being responsible for ALL of those aspects for a particular product/project/functional group.  Such is life where software development is merely a support tool in a larger organization where things change rapidly and technology has to keep up.

Where I work now, there is more granularity in the role definitions, but it still feels like herding cats most of the time.

[ErikRuud]

In this case my team is responsible for almost everything.  Design, development, deployment, as well as production and user support.  We are a small team which makes it easy for us to stay on top of the change control issues.

Thats essentially the environment I've worked in my entire career; often with one person being responsible for ALL of those aspects for a particular product/project/functional group.  Such is life where software development is merely a support tool in a larger organization where things change rapidly and technology has to keep up.

Where I work now, there is more granularity in the role definitions, but it still feels like herding cats most of the time.

The strange thing is that I work for a very large "Information Services" company.  All we sell is data.  There are 500 or so developers here, and that does not count outside consultants. You would think that we would have tighter controls.

Over the last year they have been consolidating change management through out the company so that all the areas are using the same processes.  So far my team is still responsible for change control within our application, but we are now required to go through the new system for DBA or network services.

[ChadTower]

Thats essentially the environment I've worked in my entire career; often with one person being responsible for ALL of those aspects for a particular product/project/functional group.  Such is life where software development is merely a support tool in a larger organization where things change rapidly and technology has to keep up.

That is life in a small development organization.  It really has nothing to do with whether or not the company's product is software.  I work for a retailer.  It is all about size and scope.

Erik, that change management consolidation is what I do.  It is about as rewarding as chewing on rocks.  Have fun.

[Ed_McCarron]

Where I work now, there is more granularity in the role definitions, but it still feels like herding cats most of the time.

You should fit right in then.

[ErikRuud]

Erik, that change management consolidation is what I do.  It is about as rewarding as chewing on rocks.  Have fun.

The worst part is the two hour long change review meetings that I have to listen to via conference call in case they have a question about the new DB2 table we need built.

[ChadTower]

Change Control Board meetings can be a bear.  A strong issue tracking tool workflow can cut that whole thing way way down.  We just did that here - cut our CCB meetings, which would typically be taking 25 people 2+ hours a week + prep time, down to about 45 minutes.  We did it by enforcing and automating our change control approval process in a TeamTrack workflow.  Signatures, approvals, etc can all be done via a nice web app that sends emails to the appropriate people when a ticket enters a state in which they need to take action.  They can respond via logging into the web app or responding to the email like a Yahoo mod.  Took forever and a billion small meetings to get everyone's buy in to one workflow, then we had to hold some design sessions to normalize it as much as possible, but in the end it worked out very well for us.  Huge win.

[ErikRuud]

We have something called UniCenter that pretty much does the same thing for all of our change requests, service requests and incidents.  The CAB meetings review all change requests.  They approve just about everything that has all the required sign offs in UniCenter, but you must be available to answer questions or else your request does not get approved and you then have to wait a week for the next meeting.

[ChadTower]

That's all standard stuff at the organizational level of the software lifecycle.  It works pretty well up to a certain size organization, at which point if the organization doesn't break up into individual divisions (each with their own, usually the same but not related, process) the whole concept is too much to manage and things start to break down.

Sadly, I've seen very few VPs that have the hands on experience to recognize when this happens, even when told right out over and over and over again.  Usually it will stay compeltely bogged up for a couple of years until a seemingly random draw reorg happens... it takes the divisions a year to straighten themselves out, but by then, the VP has decided that it didn't work and does it a second time based on something some consultant said to them at a luncheon.  You can tell the difference between an actual attempt at improvement and a crappy attempt at fixing an actual attempt by how many buzzwords are attached to the reorg process.