The definition perfectly describes how I started out in computers in 1981. Brought home a 4K, 8-bit computer from Radio Shack that I could barely afford and hooked it to the TV. Had never touched a computer before, zero prior knowledge and only had the manual in the box (which was surprisingly good). No one I'd ever met owned a computer at home or used one at work and I'd never really considered that you could make money with computers. I just thought the games seemed fun and the idea of learning about programming seemed cool. Turns out typing in long listings from B&W hobbyist zines and then finding all the typos was a fine way to learn.
Teaching myself assembler was harder because I had no docs. I was so clueless I actually looked up Motorola in the phone book and called to ask where I could get a manual. The sales rep who answered the phone must have taken pity on me because he mailed the CPU manual for free. I still have the purple reference card and remember the common opcodes by heart (https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Datasheets/M...)
The first time I made money was about 18 months later when I wrote a pretty handy disk utility program. Stayed up all Friday night finishing it. Copied onto floppies I sold for $5 at the local user's group Saturday morning . Made $140 and got my first 28 customers. That was enough to get me hooked on making software and selling it. ~40 years, three startups, over a dozen products, hundreds of people employed, couple million customers and two PC Magazine Product of Year awards later - regret nothing. Started on a lark to learn and have fun. Much was learned, fun was had. Wonderful journey - highly recommend.
This is a great life story. I had similar beginnings as a curious child but no PC Magazine Product of the Year! I'm sure you'll find many people here who also started curious and with no friends who cared or had even seen a computer.
Is there an equivalent to that today? As soon as a cool technology appears, there are startups selling something within a few weeks. What is the "weird" kid doing today?
I feel you're missing the point. AI has no impact on recreational programming, it's about satisfying your personal curiousities and interests. I'm currently hand rolling a database project in rust because I find writing rust is fun. If you're pausing to ask yourself "what's the use if you can just use AI" then you may not have liked programming intrinsically to begin with, but instead the second order effects it gave you.
It somewhat does have an impact on it, because a cool part of recreational programming for SOME people is to share their hobby with others, but the value that others will place on that sharing is diminishing with AI. It's just human nature to value something less or find it less impressive when it can easily be made with a machine.
The internet is increasingly full of the types of people it's pointless sharing anything nascent with anyway. I'm sure a local meetup will see your side project very differently than a subreddit or hacker news (the latter will even send armies of bots to take you down).
This is how I feel, I like to share the cool thing I did and be part of creative spaces with other people, but I feel those spaces have gotten smaller, or changed.
I did not like how this handled scrolling, made my navigation feel constrained. Maybe I was supposed to use the keyboard to navigate? It doesn't seem particularly clear.
Like the points in this presentation, recently I kept thinking it seems I need find the joy of fiddling and learning, not build some thing for money but for fun only.
Have been used some spare time to learn common lisp and write a manual project, still use web based AI as a quick search method.
But I managed to learn some common lisp and how to do cffi in common lisp and
- use gtk4 cffi binding to start a GUI app
- write a ghostty cffi to encode/decode terminal escape sequences
- write a libssh2 cffi to communicate with a ssh server
Hope I can build a minimal SSH Terminal using common lisp to keep on experiment and exploration
I’m definitely strong type 2, strong in the sense of I don’t care about activities of other types, not in the sense that I’m very good at programming.
I have a bunch of abandoned repos. I used to want to finish some of them, so perhaps I can show them to some people and get a in-domain job, but recently I realized that it is probably impossible for me to do so. I don’t have success because I don’t chase it. I chase fun and that’s what I should expect, not other things like career switch or monetary rewards.
I saw another guy I'm trying to find, he's Asian, one of the projects he did was make a map from raw OSM nodes I think. But he used a "niche" language like Zed and worked directly with GL idk was trying to find him. One of those really really good programmers. His videos are in English. The map is like Brooklyn or some part of NY.
Nice presentation, I've been asking myself about exactly this lately. Speaking for myself, I like to build a small copy of some big project, and then I put big hopes on it and start feeling guilty that it's unfinished. It turns into a kind of ban on picking up anything else, while the big one keeps getting put off too. And here there are so many different styles and approaches laid out.
A Proustian "eating the madeleine" moment occurred when I booted my MiSTer into TI-99/4A mode and began typing programs in TI BASIC, redefining characters and drawing little images with them on screen. In the midst of a tech hellscape, I suddenly remembered why I loved programming to begin with.
I was looking for this one. It's far beyond a mere "style". It breaks the entire premise.
Being a "problem solver" means you live with the code you write on a daily basis the same way as anyone with any other skill such as woodworking or sewing/knitting.
For the people who think writing code (without AI) is so hard that they make it a separate "thing" away from their usual life, I have to also wonder whether they can cook their own breakfast.
Teaching myself assembler was harder because I had no docs. I was so clueless I actually looked up Motorola in the phone book and called to ask where I could get a manual. The sales rep who answered the phone must have taken pity on me because he mailed the CPU manual for free. I still have the purple reference card and remember the common opcodes by heart (https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Datasheets/M...)
The first time I made money was about 18 months later when I wrote a pretty handy disk utility program. Stayed up all Friday night finishing it. Copied onto floppies I sold for $5 at the local user's group Saturday morning . Made $140 and got my first 28 customers. That was enough to get me hooked on making software and selling it. ~40 years, three startups, over a dozen products, hundreds of people employed, couple million customers and two PC Magazine Product of Year awards later - regret nothing. Started on a lark to learn and have fun. Much was learned, fun was had. Wonderful journey - highly recommend.
Is there an equivalent to that today? As soon as a cool technology appears, there are startups selling something within a few weeks. What is the "weird" kid doing today?
You can still build a table from scratch even though you can buy one from Ikea.
etc etc
Have been used some spare time to learn common lisp and write a manual project, still use web based AI as a quick search method.
But I managed to learn some common lisp and how to do cffi in common lisp and
- use gtk4 cffi binding to start a GUI app - write a ghostty cffi to encode/decode terminal escape sequences - write a libssh2 cffi to communicate with a ssh server
Hope I can build a minimal SSH Terminal using common lisp to keep on experiment and exploration
I have a bunch of abandoned repos. I used to want to finish some of them, so perhaps I can show them to some people and get a in-domain job, but recently I realized that it is probably impossible for me to do so. I don’t have success because I don’t chase it. I chase fun and that’s what I should expect, not other things like career switch or monetary rewards.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/@TsodingDaily
I was looking for this one. It's far beyond a mere "style". It breaks the entire premise.
Being a "problem solver" means you live with the code you write on a daily basis the same way as anyone with any other skill such as woodworking or sewing/knitting.
For the people who think writing code (without AI) is so hard that they make it a separate "thing" away from their usual life, I have to also wonder whether they can cook their own breakfast.