Thread: your inspiration

  1. #16
    Officially An Architect brewbuck's Avatar
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    My mother bought a Commodore 64 to take a computer programming class. She bought a few games for me to play on the computer when she wasn't using it. It didn't take long before I realized that I had more fun playing with the "blue screen" (the C64 BASIC prompt) than actually playing the games.

    From there I eventually moved to a PC and GWBASIC. From there it was assembly language. Then I got a copy of a game called Might & Magic III. I had fun playing it but I had more fun hacking it. I reverse-engineered the save game format using nothing but a hex editor and the game itself and mapped out the entire save file in detail.

    I wanted to write a GUI program for Windows 3.1 that would allow me to edit the save game files more easily, instead of messing with a hex editor. So I convinced my mom to buy a copy of Turbo C++ and a copy of Petzold's book Programming Windows.

    It was all, uh, downhill from there.

    EDIT: My mom became a grizzled COBOL mainframe hacker later on. So, I had competition.
    Last edited by brewbuck; 07-26-2010 at 10:37 AM.
    Code:
    //try
    //{
    	if (a) do { f( b); } while(1);
    	else   do { f(!b); } while(1);
    //}

  2. #17
    C++ Witch laserlight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rogster001
    what made you begin coding?
    I err... saw how some fellow managed to do clientside code injection to cause an entire forum layout to scroll via the non-standard marquee tag, upon which I decided to learn HTML and such. Later, I picked up PHP, took computing as a subject at GCE 'A' level and thus was taught C++.

    Quote Originally Posted by brewbuck
    My mom became a grizzled COBOL mainframe hacker later on. So, I had competition.
    Your mom grew a beard?
    Quote Originally Posted by Bjarne Stroustrup (2000-10-14)
    I get maybe two dozen requests for help with some sort of programming or design problem every day. Most have more sense than to send me hundreds of lines of code. If they do, I ask them to find the smallest example that exhibits the problem and send me that. Mostly, they then find the error themselves. "Finding the smallest program that demonstrates the error" is a powerful debugging tool.
    Look up a C++ Reference and learn How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

  3. #18
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    My primary/elementary school gave us a brief exposure to BASIC, which gave me enough interest to get a book on it from the library. When I brought it home, my brothers saw me with it, and had all done the same thing in elementary school, and eagerly taught me how to do other things in BASIC like play sounds - I was hooked! We moved and my new school didn't have anything of the sort, so my Dad bought me Turbo C++ and the rest is history.

  4. #19
    Officially An Architect brewbuck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by laserlight View Post
    Your mom grew a beard?
    It was a logical beard, not a physical beard
    Code:
    //try
    //{
    	if (a) do { f( b); } while(1);
    	else   do { f(!b); } while(1);
    //}

  5. #20

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    Hehe.

    Calm down, Bob, I'm still the same crass cynical Bubba. If I were an artist or a writer I would definitely not be like the current crop of ones we have now. I'd just be just as crass and cynical as an artist or writer.
    Whew, I was afraid. But, it's okay, because you being all artsy and creative and junk probably means you get with women constantly, and lets face it, nobody else here on cprog is getting any.
    I'm not immature, I'm refined in the opposite direction.

  6. #21
    Code Goddess Prelude's Avatar
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    >what made you begin coding?
    A bet.
    My best code is written with the delete key.

  7. #22
    &TH of undefined behavior Fordy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Prelude View Post
    >what made you begin coding?
    A bet.
    You lost, huh?


  8. #23
    Code Goddess Prelude's Avatar
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    I won the bet, but one could argue that I ultimately lost because I got sucked into a world I have no hope of escaping.
    My best code is written with the delete key.

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