I did my Master’s project in FORTRAN and C. I have a bit of experience with JAVA and C++. I’m open to anything! I want it to be a relatively marketable skill.
How to learn a programming language
It made me
And now what?!? 
"I think, that I'm not a good programmer, but I was able to solve every problem I met, so... It works. :)"
How I did it: In the 80's my father bought a C64, where I started to program small things in basic, because i was curious. Unfortunately I wasn't very successful, because I didn't have enough resources to be so, and I was only 10 years old. :) Later, in '93 our family bough a pc, where I started to program c/c++, it was much more fun, because I managed to solve more difficult problems, as far as I remember my biggest challange was my own prime number search code. It was not sophisticated, but it was my first problem, what I solved alone. :) In the second half of 90's I started to use Linux, and tried to program websites. My first website was a static one (I mean there were no cms, blog or any kind of engine behind it) only for 2 weeks. 2 weeks after it went online I realized, that it is really cumbersome to update it manually, so I tried to do something with cgi scripts. I learnt perl in 21 days. :) Later that year I met some other guys who was interested in such cms engines, and wanted to use my "experience" on their own sites. I found out, that it's not too effective to code websites in perl with text files as database, so the next site I made was programmed in php, with mysql database. This site became the biggest IT news site in my country. :) The funniest thing is that they used that engine of mine for nine years! Later at the university I met a group of people, who developed some kind of medical application, and they asked me to help them. In that project I started to learn java language, and finally I wrote my diploma about a Java application, I developed from sratch.
Lessons & tips: Find a problem, what you want to solve, and try to solve it. Everything is possible, just don't give up!
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Entries
Candidates
4 weeks ago
I have no idea what would be good to learn. Some ones I’ve heard of:
Java
Python -I’ve tried this and failed at it :)
Ruby
C++
Perl
Joeyzaza82 says what the hell? I've been cheerless for 2 days now? Damned Fairy
Python
2 months ago
I’ve started to learn Python, which is cool because it’s a pretty easy language to learn and you can kind of get an understanding of the process involved. It’s funny because it is extremely boring and extremely interesting at the same time. Typing the same variables and strings over and over is pretty monotonous, but when you actually compile it all and run it it’s pretty neat to see it all work (that is of course after spending another hour debugging everything, lol) When I go to school this fall it’s for programming, but it would be nice to have a head start going into it.
Slowly but surely
3 months ago
I’m using a book called “The Pragmatic Programmers Learn to Program” in the “Facets of Ruby” series. I’ve done very simple programs so far, but doing that has really increased my confidence in becoming more “techie.” I think learning the basics of programming will be a boost to my career as a technical writer.
Programming
9 months ago
If there was a job where you could get paid for fantastic ideas that would be the one for me. However, it’s kind of expected that you are able to follow through on some of your ideas. I studied Media Production at University just before user generated content exploded on the internet rendering everything I learned obsolete. These days, if it aint of the web it ain’t worth the time of day. Knowing this I am aware that I have a large missing chunk in my knowledge. Programming.
I love the internet, serious love them. I love all this social networking nonce-sense, I love Twitter, Youtube, 8tracks and their ilk. I’ve even had ideas about what I’d like to see on the coming down the internet tubes. However I don’t have a blue clue about how any of these wonderful time wasting websites came to be. Hey, I can tweak a Blogger or Tumblr template as well as any eight year old but I want to know more.
A friend who works at the BBC pretty much summed it up by saying that in the next ten years everything will be delivered on the internet – hell, I’ve been saying that since the 90s myself. As a result I am going to make an effort at learning programming. Said friend pointed me in the direction of Ruby as a good place to start.
If I can get my head around that then I will step up into another one. No promises I’ll get that far but it’s time to give this one a go.
Untitled
13 months ago
I’ve dabbled in Java and Python a little bit (meaning I can write “Hello World”, the easiest thing to possibly do). I would like to learn but I don’t know what I would do with it once I learned.
I think I’d like to make websites. Is that mostly in Java now? Or is it still pretty much rooted in HTML? Anyway, I think making a website(s) would be worthwhile.
Java
17 months ago
A friend of mine that knows some programming has told me to learn Java, so I guess that is the one that I will learn!
Untitled
19 months ago
Oops – I didn’t mean to add this to my ‘To Do’ list, just wanted to get on the other side of it to be registered as “Willing to Help”. I’ve been in the IT industry for nearly ten years now, and programming is my bread and butter.
PHP... check
2 years ago
Just learned the basics of PHP. Very easy to pick up if you have had any experience in other languages.
