Although I've been in these forums for 3 years, my "desire" for programming started more or less 4 years from now. I remember looking with wonder/curiosity at a snippet of code called "Glossomatheia"( Γλωσσομάθεια ) which was just a translated, simplified version of Pascal for high-school education here in Greece( Hellas ). At that time I was attending a computers class and I suddenly, the reason is unclear to me yet, opened the interpreter program for that language and asked the teacher: "How can I write a program with this?!". She demonstrated by typing a tiny program, which I unfortunately don't remember, and when she hit the "Run" button, it actually printed something!! I was intrigued because I couldn't perceive how a few lines of text could actually do something meaningful!!! ( Let me say that THAT class had nothing to do with programming )
Needless to say, after that day I dived into the concept of making programs a.k.a programming. Firstly, I studied the book that accompanied the specific language they were teaching at school. Concurrently I has searching around the web( mind you, I didn't have internet at that time, therefore I had to regularly visit net-cafes ), trying to find information. I firstly stabled upon an interpreter called "Just BASIC", which interpreted a simplified dialect of BASIC. Do you remember the feeling that you had when you looked for the first time to an unfamiliar language? There were a lot of example programs downloaded along, but I COULDN'T OPEN THE HELP FILES! Darn you Windows Vista!!! Anyway, no 24/7 available internet, I started trying to understand this code all by myself. After a lot of trial and error, I started achieving something, even if it was just some puny little programs. But the real tackle with programming was when I started learning C++.
My first encounter with C++ was when I clicked on a link for "C++ Game Programming". I still have the pages! I used to get into a site that I liked, download the pages and take them with me to read them at ease when I got home... Anyway, I started reading the tutorials, writing the code, compiling it, altering it etc( Forgot to say, my first IDE was Dev-C++ ). Then I stuck on the Allegro tutorials that continue after the 11th part I think. A little after that is when I found cprogramming. At first, it was an ordinary site, but as I started reading the tutorials, tips and everything, I knew that there was much knowledge in here. Much of my elementary and deep understanding of C and C++ comes from this site! That's when I registered at the forum and, as any newb, started posting questions on many trivial subjects.
After half a year or so, I started reading more about programming in general. Data structures, UML modeling, optimizations, graphics, computer's theory. Mathematics, calculus, algebra, matrix & 2D/3D/4D math, physics, and what I perform right now, hardware ports & interrupts, x86 assembly while building my very own operating system! o_O
While studying all these, I spontaneously returned to cboard in order to ask for opinions or to solve a big problem. I felt obliged to this site, and of course to many of you members who helped me along the way, therefore I started answering( or rather trying to answer ) to other's questions.
Around 2 years before today, I was trying to write many different programs, small and big. What I really feel ashamed of is that I completed only 3 or 4 of around 50 different projects that I have started. Sometimes I didn't have the necessary knowledge or experience, other times ( in the case of graphics for example ) I didn't have the resources, while sometimes I got bored of a project or had made a fatal design error and had to build everything from scratch again!...
Right now I'm at the 2nd year ( of 4 years ) of my college, which is about "Technology, Computer science and Telecommunications". At first, it was fine. That is, until the programming classes. Please don't think that I exaggerate when I say that from the 6 different programming professors( two for each "lab" and one for each theory ), only one was actually better than me!( C & C++ ) Do you think I was happy for that?! I went there to learn!! Do you know what I felt when I realized that I would learn next to nothing there?! I felt betrayed!!! Believe me that 25% of the time ( mostly at theories ) I argued with the professors, trying to show them the error of their ways! They where making such n00b mistakes, both in programming in general and in C/C++ in particular, that it wasn't funny!! Being with C/C++ for some years, I can't say I have much experience but I undoubtedly have much knowledge on these languages, at the very least. Just as we here correct any answer that we consider wrong, I was doing the same at class. That resulted in many arguments with the professors... Anyway, that's OUR "educational" system, I don't want to trouble you any more with that, I just mentioned it to give you an overview.
Why am I writing all these? you may ask. Well, putting aside that I wanted to get those memories off my chest, I recently noticed that the original "flame", the long & strong love for programming that I had, has started "fading away". All potential projects seem either too easy, too hard or too boring to undertake. I have drop to a "theoretical" state, by only answering questions and still searching for more things to learn, but never practicing anything. I would like to hear( read ) your personal opinion on this. Thanks for reading!
Originally Posted by GReaper
, but as I have no chance of a raise or promotion any time soon I feel that it's my best hope of being able to afford a house. The challenge is making a "good" Lucky Dip generator, one that correctly weighs the past against the possible future if you know what I mean. My friends also cheer me on (they would like money too 
).
) either that is the case or I am in the biggest procrastination rut ever and my head gets all cloudy, then I don't fell like doing anything but sleeping/napping. I do think I know what you are going through though, usually I can visualize how a program will work in a few seconds like most of you probably can, but that isn't the fun part for me. The fun part for me is seeing it work, being able to say "I did that". Also it helps when all of your friends are extreme noobs when it comes to computers so they over-react a lot when you tell them what they are doing. I tried making my brother extremely impressed once, then he said "when you know how to program it makes it a lot less impressive."
