What's your favorite thing about programming?

General Forums Off-topic Chat
#1

I’m curious; what’s everyone’s favorite thing about programming? Do you do it just to “get things done” or do you enjoy it? What’s your favorite programming language?

Personally, I love seeing my ideas unfold over the days/weeks and the satisfaction that comes with saying “I made that!”… I’ve been programming for more than half my life (16bit .asm when I was 9 :wink: ) and it’s become such an everyday part of my life that I would feel like an empty shell without it (pun intended). As for my favorite language… hmm, tough one! It’s changed over the years, I used to love doing low level stuff in .asm, then I heard of this witchcraft called C where you didn’t have to write a 75 line routine to 0xB800 or 0xA000 just to say “hello, world”… as the years went on I dabbled in a few others and eventually ended up with Ruby for the most amount of time. And now recently, when I got back into using Blender I decided to give my ultimate fear (python, it’s quite intimidating, y’know!) a try (no curly braces! what is this!?) and I’ve fallen in love with programming all over again :slight_smile:

So, what’s your programming story? I’d love to hear! :slight_smile:

#2

Sure, it always jazzed me, since I was a little kid, to think about managing to make a machine do something useful. It’s been way too many years now for me to say that I’ve got a “favorite” language, but doing this kind of work still excites me. And I definitely like to know that I did something for someone that made their professional lives easier. Computer aptitude gives you a lot of chances to do just that, and I can’t think of a more personally-rewarding way to make a living.

#3

I started with BASIC on a Coleco Adam in 1985, then learned assembler on a Commodore 64 (which I could write in my head while riding my bike to college and type it in when I got there and it worked!) then C, REX and AREXX on an Amiga. After that, it became a blur of languages as I branched out and just used whatever was needed for the task at hand.

My favourite language? PHP

The curly braces make it familiar, the typeless variables make it convenient and its OOP capabilities make it clean. Love that.

And I agree; Python IS intimidating! Blender Python is even more so since it’s not just a matter of learning the language, but learning Blender’s particular way of using it.

For instance, this morning I was looking at a few BP scripts written by other people and I noticed that methods (or functions, if that’s what they’re supposed to be called) aren’t always indented the way I would expect. It’s as if a function/method can be part of another function/method judging by the indentation.

Or is it just that the PB interpreter is forgiving of this type of indentation practice?

My favourite thing about programming: (quoting Doc Brown from Back to the Future) It works! It works! I finally invented something that works!

#4

My favorite part of programming is when the thing you’ve been hacking at for 6 hours finally works. It’s like you won something. I too started with BASIC on my Vic20, then the Amiga and moved up to VB before life got in the way. I have lately been considering learning either C or C+, but I’m unsure if my heart is still in it.

#5

Then why not take the plunge and learn Python instead? The advantage is that it’d be easier to find motivation, what with all the things you could do with it in Blender. Just a thought.

#6

Perhaps I will take another look at it - start small and see if the interest is still there. I guess I just thought one (or both) of the other two would allow doing a broader range of things. And I admit to a partially altruistic if not over-reaching thought, I kind of thought C would allow doing some of the more important work in Blender.

#7

You may very well be right, especially if you have a good understanding of math. I was assuming you were more into the art side of things these days where Python would allow you to build tools to use during the act of creation. I guess I shouldn’t have assumed, eh? :slight_smile:

#8

No, you’re partly right, making some tools would be nice, but actually contributing something larger would be also. I’ve always been active in both artistic and programming things, but have been focusing on the art more lately cause I’m so out of date on languages. I also just realized what I said sounded kind of pompous. I didn’t mean it to be.

By the way, get much snow there last Friday?

#9

I know how you feel; I’ve been relearning 3D stuff over the last two years, but mostly (for about 10 years now) I’ve been acting and writing. My recent entanglement with Blender Python is the first real dive into programming I’ve taken since the late 1990s.

I didn’t take it that way. :slight_smile:

It wasn’t as bad as they predicted, but is it ever? :slight_smile: We got a few inches, but it was melted enough by Saturday morning to get the car out of the underground garage, which is tricky if there’s more than a couple of inches on the ramp. The ramp has an ‘s’ turn as well as a 15 degree slope; I don’t know what they were thinking when they designed it.

#10

My favorite thing about programming is that it usually forces you to solve problems that never existed until you started writing that damn piece of code :slight_smile: And when programming, you end up learning helluva lot more you though you would, and then some.
As for favorite language… Though lately I’ve been doing mostly web stuff, I always fell for systems languages. For a long time that place for me was taken by C++. But then something happened: I discovered D (to be more precise, D2). Its beauty, its simplicity, its power. And though I’ve yet to write something entirely in D, I am a total convert. D rules, and let nobody tell you otherwise :smiley:

#11

LOL :slight_smile:

I was looking at that for a while a couple of months ago. I don’t remember much about it, but I was intrigued at the time. Now you’ve got me curious enough to take another look.