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Salazaar
3rd November 2007, 15:50
For pure curiousness. Are you a professional programmer? I mean is it your job? And when have you started your journey with programming?
Regards

jpn
3rd November 2007, 16:13
I wrote my first "hello world" application in 2001 when I started studying information technology at Tampere university of technology. I've been working as a software designer since April 2005. I met Qt about two years ago after we took it into use in a new project at work. I fell in love, immediately.. ;)

DeepDiver
3rd November 2007, 17:07
I started back in the 80s with an Atari ST and OmicronBasic at the age of 14.
It was just cool to say: Yes I can write computer programs! :o

9 years a started my career as a professional software developer, software engineer, system designer, system architect ..... buzz-word-bingo :D

Since 2 years I'm self employed and develop cross-platform and distributed software for mid-size companies using linux (debian & kubuntu), windows, ZeroC ICE (http://www.zeroc.com) and - of course - Qt.

fullmetalcoder
3rd November 2007, 19:01
Jeez! Am I the only fellow over there to whom programming remain just a hobby?

I doubt anyone care but here's how I caught the virus :

When I was about 11, my father bought a small book about C because he had to play a bit with that language at work. I read it and started coding immediatly. Of course it was rubbish (you can't even imagine... goto everywhere, no use of functions, ...) but some concepts were kinda hard to master back then.

Three years later, I got a TI calculator and fell back to programming. Basic-like language soon bored so I learnt assembly and did some decent stuff (considering the hardware and the language used it indeed was an achievement ;))

Finally I started enjoying C++ (surprinsigly, assembly appeared to help for it taught me a lot about the use (and abuse) of pointers....) but my first steps were a bit disappointing until I stumbled upon Qt 4, about two years ago : it's just SOOOOO addictive! ;)

marcel
3rd November 2007, 19:03
In '97, in my first highschool year, and the program was written in Pascal.

Salazaar
3rd November 2007, 20:15
Jeez! Am I the only fellow over there to whom programming remain just a hobby?
Nope, Fmc, you're not alone ;)

Kumosan
4th November 2007, 10:17
Please define: 'Professional programmer'.

Michiel
4th November 2007, 11:14
You're a professional programmer if programming is your job. As in, you do it professionally.

I've been a professional programmer on and off. At one time I actually did C++/Qt, but this quickly switched to PHP, unfortunately. Right now I'm not one.

I once started with Superlogo when I was 10. Made a small shooting game with it. I quickly switched to Visual Basic, because I didn't know any better. Now C++ is my language of choice.

wysota
4th November 2007, 17:48
I'd say a "professional programmer" means that your level of expertise in programming is high, regardless of the source of money you spend for your bread and butter. And also - define "programmer". Is it a person that writes code? Is making analysis programming as well? What if you actually don't get paid for writing the code but it is still part of your daily work? Does maintaining a programming forum make me a professional programmer? ;)

Salazaar
4th November 2007, 19:17
I'd say a "professional programmer" means that your level of expertise in programming is high, regardless of the source of money you spend for your bread and butter. And also - define "programmer". Is it a person that writes code? Is making analysis programming as well? What if you actually don't get paid for writing the code but it is still part of your daily work? Does maintaining a programming forum make me a professional programmer? ;)
Hehe:D I meant professional programmer - person whose job is developing software of something related (as you said for example analyzing code). You might do it professionally, but if it isn't your job, you aren't a professional. :D i hope I'd made it clear ;)

Kumosan
5th November 2007, 09:01
Hehe:D I meant professional programmer - person whose job is developing software of something related (as you said for example analyzing code). You might do it professionally, but if it isn't your job, you aren't a professional. :D i hope I'd made it clear ;)

According to your definition I am a professional programmer. Though I like wysota's definition better. Currently I have to work with code, which was also written by a 'professional programmer' (your definition), who should rather has gotten all his fingers broken than given access to a keyboard. :mad:

mnemonic_fx
5th November 2007, 12:49
:) It seems most active people in this forum are Qt advanced programmer.

Just to tell my story:

I'm starting to learn serious programming directly in C++ at college (around 20 years old).

But after all those years until my graduation at 22 years old. I've mostly programmed in MATLAB :(, assembly, and embedded C. Because I'm an electrical engineering student.

After I graduate, I've got a job at startup company in Indonesia using Qt4 :)
And Qt4 is great.., it has beautiful codes.

And I wish Trolltech and its customers would more actively promote the use of Qt in Asia.
Since most job market in Asia still dependent on Micr0s0ft technology.
We need to promote Qt, so we could have a good job market for Qt around Asia.
This would benefit Trolltech and me as a Software Developer :) (so I would not lose my job).

Salazaar
5th November 2007, 20:03
According to your definition I am a professional programmer. Though I like wysota's definition better. Currently I have to work with code, which was also written by a 'professional programmer' (your definition), who should rather has gotten all his fingers broken than given access to a keyboard. :mad:
I wouldn't call it being a professional programmer - working with code in that case (just only rewriting it because programmer has broken his fingers) can't be called programming :rolleyes:
Regards

wysota
5th November 2007, 22:49
Define programming then :)

Kumosan
6th November 2007, 12:01
I wouldn't call it being a professional programmer - working with code in that case (just only rewriting it because programmer has broken his fingers) can't be called programming :rolleyes:
Regards

Unfortunately this is what most professional programmers do: Working with other ppls. code. It is more a rare exception to be able to start a new system from scratch.

Salazaar
6th November 2007, 13:09
Define programming then :)
Well, developing software (mostly) using one of programming languages;)

wysota
6th November 2007, 13:21
Define "developing software" then... Is unit tester "developing software"? Is beta-tester "developing software"? Is helpdesk "developing software"? Is a gui designer "developing software"? What about software architects, designers, requirement engineers, etc?

WinchellChung
6th November 2007, 18:29
I became interested in computers in 1977 while in college. We programmed on Hollerith punch cards back then. I had a large project (making a 3-D star map) that I was doing with a pocket calculator. Took 15 minutes per star, and with 3,000 stars this was depressing. A friend wrote a quick and dirty Fortran program that did the calculations in no time flat. I was hooked.

Cut my teeth on an Atari 800 in the 1980's, went on to Pascal on the Macintosh/Lisa, then on to C++ on Windows.

I use Qt at work, and PyQt as a hobby.

Salazaar
6th November 2007, 20:56
Is unit tester "developing software"?
It depends. If he's just a pure tester, who don't know what is programming, than no. If he tests software to find out what and how to (of course, he thinks about code) improve a feature, than yes.

Is beta-tester "developing software"?
No, he's just testing (non-programming things)

Is helpdesk "developing software"?
What do you mean?

Is a gui designer "developing software"? What about software architects, designers, requirement engineers, etc?
Yes, they are;)

marcel
6th November 2007, 21:33
You'd be surprised to find out that they all are developing software, but of course, not by your definition, which is like 50 years old.

They are part of the software development process(which consists of all those phases, not necessarily in that order), therefore they are developing software, even if some of them do not write actual code.



If he tests software to find out what and how to (of course, he thinks about code) improve a feature, than yes.

A tester usually looks for bugs, not new functionalities or improvements.

wysota
6th November 2007, 22:03
It depends. If he's just a pure tester, who don't know what is programming, than no. If he tests software to find out what and how to (of course, he thinks about code) improve a feature, than yes.
There are different kinds of tests, like blackbox and whitebox testing. According to me both these ways require programming knowledge. Another thing is writing test cases - for unit testing I'd say it requires programming knowledge as well, although you don't even write a single line of code. For system testing it could be different...


No, he's just testing (non-programming things)
What do you mean by "just testing"?


What do you mean?
Trolltech support is the perfect case study of what I mean.


Yes, they are;)
Although they might have no knowledge of programming languages? It doesn't suit your definition too much. Either the definition is broken or these people are not developers. I'd say it's not that easy to come up with a complete definition of "programming" or "developing software", that's the reason I asked my question in the first place and I fully understand doubts people have when taking part in this poll.

Uwe
7th November 2007, 13:10
I'd say it's not that easy to come up with a complete definition of "programming" or "developing software", that's the reason I asked my question in the first place and I fully understand doubts people have when taking part in this poll.
Isn't this poll simply about, if you are professional ( = get money for whatever you do with Qt), or if you use Qt in a hobby project ?
Of course this has nothing to do with the "quality" of your work,

Uwe

Salazaar
7th November 2007, 19:31
Isn't this poll simply about, if you are professional ( = get money for whatever you do with Qt), or if you use Qt in a hobby project ?
Of course this has nothing to do with the "quality" of your work,

Uwe
Yes, that's it! ;)

GreyGeek
8th January 2008, 19:34
My first training in "coding" was plugging banana cords on on the IBM 402 patch panel to control which columns in the cards tallied with what totals. That was 1959.

My next training was in graduate school in 1968. I took a "Numerical Analysis" class and we used Fortran 64 to code four examples. It took the entire semester and even then some folks didn't get the four examples done. First, using a KSR-133 keyboard at 10 cps you punched holes in a yellow paper tape to encode the solution and the data. Then the tapes were sent off for batch processing on the CDC 6600 mainframe in another town. The results of the run were printed on greenbar paper. If the programming was valid your solution was printed out, otherwise you got a source listing showing where the errors were. ANY typos at any stage of the process required a complete re-punching of the yellow tape. Some never got past that first step on the first problem. At this time very few colleges or universities offered computer programming classes. There wasn't any curriculum nor were there degrees in the subject matter being offered. Folks were learning it as part of Physics or Math courses, like I did. COBOL had been invented only three years before.

My next programming experience was in 1978 when I bought an Apple ][+. I taught myself Apple BASIC and a few months later was asked to teach it to other teachers in teacher extension courses. I was teaching science and math at the time and the store from which I bought the Apple asked me to come on weekends and demo it. I did. Then I began programming solutions to a problems that customers were asking about. My first computer sale was a 48K Apple ][+ with two Disk ][ drives and a Panasonic monitor. The printer was a Centronics line printer. Total package" $5,000 in 1979 dollars. My share: $2,500. My monthly take home pay from teaching; $700. The tale began wagging the dog. There were several other languages that became available for the Apple and I learned them all: Pascal, Forth, Prolog, COBOL, ... Within a year I had sold several hundred thousand worth of Apples, and $360,000 worth of an artificial intelligence card for the Apple called "Saavy". My share on that card was about $100K, but I never got to see a dime of it. (That's a story for another time.)

So, I quit teaching and selling Apples and started full time computer consulting and teaching programming for the next 15 years. My last client was the NE Dept of Revenue. One month into a 3 month project they created a programming position and asked me to apply. My wife loved the idea because that meant I would be home on evenings and weekends, instead of spending 6-8 weeks at a stretch on a project out of state. I will retire in 5 months.

GreyGeek
28th January 2008, 14:02
Yes.

I began "programming" by plugging a back panel with banana wires on an IBM 402 tabulator in the fall of 1959, fresh out of HS, while attending the Barns School of Business to learn "programming".

Nine years later I learned Fortran 64 in grad school.

Ten years later, in 1978, I purchased the first Apple ][+ sold on the state of Nebraska and used Apple BASIC to write custom software for folks who purchased Apples. I quickly switched to Pascal. In 1980 I switched to writing applications on the IBM PC using SAVVY, then switched ot AREV, then to Visual BASIC 3.0, then to PowerBuilder (3.0 to 5.0), then to Visual FoxPro for 10 years, then to Qt/C++ three years ago. Between languages used to put bacon on the breakfast table I experimented with other languages like Pilot, Turtle, Prolog, Forth (I wrote an auto parts store application using ACE Forth on an RS Xenix platform - Forth is my all time favorite language. Too bad its dead.), Java, Python, Ruby, Haskell, D and some others.

I retire in 5 months and will probably never program again. Going out using Qt/C++ is a great note on which to end a career!


It seems an odd fact that programming as a profession rose and is falling in concert with my career in that field. If pundits are correct programming will no longer consist of assembling lines of code and compiling them. It will be using web based application generators like APEX. Thank God I'm getting out in time.

TimButterfield
8th February 2008, 02:32
I am a professional programmer in at least a couple of the definitions proffered. I have been getting paid to develop software for 20+ years. I am also quite good at it, being proficient in many languages/technologies. Unfortunately, my Qt usage to date has been only personal (I also program as a hobby) and not as a part of my paid work. I gues if I release some of my work, the third category may also apply.

LeoVingi
5th May 2008, 21:48
I prefer to call myself hobbyist ;), I know C&C++ and C# I didn’t yet use any of those languages professionally to write a project that can be used by others.
I just love to learn programming languages and I really love the C family of programming languages for some reason I m not sure about.
My first adventure in using some GUI framework for C++ was with MFC, I really liked MFC but lots of talking about MFC future and its easy to notice how MFC is old after using it for a while. so I learned C# trying to find easier way to write windows programs.
I m still improving my C# skills and the language is just huge the same apply to the BCL…
C# just good but it doesn’t match my criteria (portability, speed, popularity)…:confused:
Really using C++ makes me feel like pro!
So I did lots of research about many GUI class libraries for C++ out there, and I found that QT can be a better option than MFC.
Regards
Hatem.

ad5xj
29th May 2008, 21:16
I started programing on an Imsai 8080 home built computer. It was a crude form of Basic. That led to another programming job in basic and then to another in COBOL. This is an interesting long journey through the many flavors of basic, including Visual Basic and Real Basic (which I will not bore you with now). I am now a full time C++/Qt programmer.

You may note that I have never taken a class in programing nor any language yet I have been a professional programmer for 20+ years.

brent99
21st July 2008, 18:16
I was selected in elementary school (we're talking about 1980 here) to pilot a program introducing students to computers around the 4th grade. I remember being wowed that I could use the "?" for math "?4+3" would return 7 on an Apple, or something like that...

I would stay after school to write tiny basic programs. My brother and I eventually cajoled my grandmother to buy us a Vic 20 complete with a 20k memory adapter! I remember it costing something around $300. It came with a free plug-in copy of Radar Rat Race.

Not having a word processor, I wrote my own in BASIC around the 7th or 8th grade. I invented right justify, although my parents failed to patent it. My word processor worked fine but when you ran out of 20k memory, it would crash. You had to save bytes by using a '.' instead of a 0. I eventually typed in a popular machine language one from Run magazine. That was a fun day. I also won a programming contest sponsored by a college university that had a few thousand contestants in it. I went on to write a few simple Sprite games during high school, and I was involved in one local BBS system in Virginia that I ran on a friends computer.


I graduated from Carnegie Mellon in computer engineering and work as a software engineer in real-time/embedded systems programming. I've been hiding from GUI work for most of my 15 year career as programming GUIs for Windows suck. BUT...I started using QT early this year. Its easily the best GUI/C++ library I've ever used, and I've dabbled in just about everything at one time or another.

Being a professional isn't quite the party you imagine as a teenager, but its not all that bad either. For one, I got paid to post this message...haha. ;) I spend nearly every day in front of a computer for hours and hours doing what often seems like an endless toil of problem solving and troubleshooting both at home and in the office. This has continued for about 25 years now. Its always funny to go into a job interview, get asked a couple oddball questions about some random programming language, and have the interviewer walk away having concluded that "I don't know much about computers..." lol.

-=Freaky=-
28th August 2008, 15:45
wow, lots of professionals here ... :)

i started programming when i was about 14 or 15, with c++ as my first programming language.
about a year ago i bought a qt book which was really cheap so i thought why not try it ... and i loved it instantly. :D

now i'm 17 and still going to school.
i wouldn't consider myself a "professional programmer", even though i make some money with programming as a "side job".

sincerely,
julian

john_god
17th September 2008, 22:58
Nop.
I started programming in 1º year in university in 1994. I almost didn't know how to turn on a Pc when they gave C to drink. I spend long night hours doing stupid borland C ms-dos programs with the graphic library. Last university year spend the hole summer learning MFC from Visualc 6 with opengl to do a project that would show 3D graphics of electromagnetic waves. I now work as electrical engineer but I can't stop programming in free times. I also learn a little of php and mysql, but that doesn't satisfied me very much.

Can you tell me why you program ? I program because I feel fascinated with dialogs and graphic aplicattions and with developing algorithms. I would some times feel frustated because in Microsotf MFC everything seems complicated. I found Qt in Web few months ago and I feel like Microsoft has been cheating me for a long time. With Qt I feel I will be able to unleash some kind of secret mighty power.
That's my passion about programming.

araglin
19th December 2008, 13:30
I want to become professional programmer.
Began as network administrator, then graduated from university and became engineer in electronics. Worked in science for several years - I tested IC-chips in radiation environments. Developed small utilities using different languages along that time. That utilities were intended only for my purposes and not for public, so they were rather ugly.
And now I had enough of all this!
Left my job and now I'm trying to find a pure programmer job.

fullmetalcoder
19th December 2008, 20:32
Can you tell me why you program ?
Solving (more or less) concrete problems, "building" things, optimizing complex algorithms as much as possible are the things that attract me most in programming.

Now on for the killer features that make programming much more attractive than physics :


you're able to see the results of modifications a couple of seconds after making them
experimentation is a lot easier and significantly cheaper


and also more attractive than mathematics :


nobody bothers you with continuity, everything is discrete
infinity sedom appears (I only faced it when considering the asymptotic behavior of algorithms in big-O notation)


And of course there are bigger and more lively communities, which makes a hell of a difference.

rexi
20th December 2008, 00:18
Can you tell me why you program ?

Well, I've been interested in computers for a long time now, since the old days of the C64, when I started my "programming career" with BASIC. There are a few reasons why I program, one is that I want to know how stuff works. That is why I sometimes bother to deal with such low level stuff as C ;) I never got accustomed to assembler, though, that's simply a border I don't want to cross :D Even plain C++ can get quite annoying, and I doubt I would use it if it wasn't for Qt. I'm more like the Java kind of guy. Yes, I want to know how stuff works, but no, in everyday life I can't be bothered with dealing with all those quirks of a computer that these low level languages expose to you ;) Fortunately, Qt brings C++ quite close to Java, and Qt's native stuff is an added benefit compared to Java.

I take the stand that a computer is a tool, and I like to be able to craft my tools into a shape that is most useful to me. So, the most important reason why I learned to program is to do so. If I have an itch to scratch that bothers me enough to spend the time to write an application/script/whatever, I do so. This, also, is the main reason why I use the software I'm using right now (Linux, KDE, Qt, to name the most important parts), as these enable me to solve my problems (more or less) easily, as they are open platforms that everybody can get involved with.

Raccoon29
28th January 2009, 13:13
I'm a pro too. Indeed I'm at office desk right now :P
My first program was a very simple test program in GWBASIC on an old Olivetti 286... around 20MB of memory... ahahah unbelievable nowdays! This was around 2002.
Then I started high school specializating in 2006, and I got already the passion for that language that is C++.
First GUI appl with Borland C++ Builder just 2 years ago... I don't remember what... maybe a CAD... but when I met Qt for work, then Borland became junk.
Most of all, Qt helped me a lot to even better understand C++ itself: inheritance, virtual, templates and so on... and not to forget the powerfull of signal/slot system

Why I program?? 'cause it makes me feel a god! :)
You know, create, edit, destroy... that's your own perfect world, you decide what there has to happen and how! If there pops out a problem, your task is to solve that problem, and often this is quite exciting too! C'mon isn't great when you simply push a button and then pops out an answer that would require at least an hour to compute manually??
It's absolutely great!

T3AB4GG3R117
28th January 2009, 14:39
It is nice to see that there is such a high percentage of pros.

sneg
8th February 2009, 03:06
Hmm, semi-professional, I'd say. While I do earn some money by programming as a student assistant, it's not my real job, yet. But I'm on that way.

I started at the age of 12 (or 13? 14?): My parents gave me an old Intel 286 computer that they got from who knows where and I played with it, teaching myself the basics of MS-DOS, batch files and so on. Then I found QBasic, studied the examples and quickly understood how programming works and created some simple programs. Later, a friend gave me a copy of Turbo Pascal and I learnt Pascal, then I progressed to Delphi with its object orientation and GUI stuff, and then to C++, OpenGL, shaders, Qt etc... Oh, and, of course, I designed complex levels with elaborate scripts for games like Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Starcraft and Warcraft III. Ah, good old times. ;)

john_god
11th February 2009, 01:08
Why I program?? 'cause it makes me feel a god! :)
You know, create, edit, destroy... that's your own perfect world, you decide what there has to happen and how! If there pops out a problem, your task is to solve that problem, and often this is quite exciting too! C'mon isn't great when you simply push a button and then pops out an answer that would require at least an hour to compute manually??
It's absolutely great!

Yes, It's absolutely great !!! :)

drescherjm
10th April 2009, 22:40
I have been programming professionally since 1996. Well before that I started programming in the early 80s when the commodore vic 20 came out. For the most part I have had very few weeks between then and now that I have spent less than 40 hours programming. I would estimate I have broken 1 million lines of code. With the bulk of this being the 500K+ lines of MFC I churned out in the day job before I found Qt. To this point I have written 30 to 35K lines of Qt with the bulk of the Qt code being produced in the last 3 months while working on a cross-platform application for Lung CT viewing and analysis..

vieraci
12th April 2009, 08:57
I'm definitely not a professional programmer, I do it because I am a self-employed person and I program to suit my requirements. I've sold my creations in the past to others that saw and wanted what I had, but it's not my bread and butter.

budr
15th April 2009, 17:20
I've been playing and working with linux since about slackware 2 in '95 or 96. In a roundabout way that landed me my current job. My title is systems analyst, but what I do is mostly sysadmin stuff.

I bear approximately the same relation to the term "programmer" that Gomer Pyle does to the term "mechanic." I taught myself perl by copying and pasting stuff out of the llama book and the camel book. I've written a sack full of perl scripts for this and that over the years. My code would probably make a real programmer puke, but it gets the job done. I've dabbled with C, C++, and Qt, not enough to do anything really useful, but I'm still learning.

SteveH
4th May 2009, 23:51
I'd have to say yes, even now. I started in the mid 70's earning my living with micro's and machine code and progressed from switches to punched tape to floppies and finally ending up with all singing all dancing IDE's. I've designed and programed for most commercial micro's and systems from dos to windows, even PLC's ! (never did get much time on unix/linux though - sorry chaps)
What I can say is that a professional programmer is a state of mind - not a meal ticket. Some of us code junkies can get so hooked that we put loads of extra hours in just for the fun of it.
As for now I'm sort of semi retired (I got the last heave ho in '98), so I built up my own business in another field (karting) that earns me loads of cash. First thing I did when the money came in was build a large extension on my house as a hobby room - I'm sat in front of 3 monitors, several computers and printers and a network going out to my business premises that got more bits on it than NASA.
I'll keep on programing until the grey matter gives up, and so long as my coffin has a keyboard and a network port I'll die happy.

Dante
23rd July 2009, 06:31
I started to learn programming as a kid(Now I think I really was)I think I was 12.I dreamed to be the youngest game developer in the world when my family boutht our first computer.I started with visual basic but as I felt a harry in my mind(and stiil do)I couldn't stand that really simple tutorial.It was just 20 short lessons.So I forget about it for a some months and just entertaining myself by learning windows itself.I worked with movimaker and broke windows.I couldn't setup a windows so every time soemone must come and set it up.He said "don't go to C and install nothing in it"But I went in and ruined it.After that I saw dark basic.I learnt it a little but when I realized that its really amatuer I started to be fruastred.Then some where there was a 2d soccer simulation contest.We had a C++ class and we just learnt to cout things.But I bought a book.Because like most of my contry's book,it was bullshit,I forget it for months again.Then I found herbert schildt's C++ the complete reference.All of you know what a perfect book it is.(I apologize herb,It was a PDF).I finished it four months ago.oops.Before that maybe 1 year ago I learnt PHP and Python too.Then I looked for sth to let me build GUIs in C++ easier than using WinAPI.I found Qt.But I have a bullshit internet so I impressed a computer attendant of somehwere that had ADSL connection and he downloaded Qt4.5.0 and gave it to me.It was three months ago.since that time I'm trying to master Qt.Now I got some simple C++ university projects as a side job.now I'm 17 and going to the last year of university.It was a pleasure journey.Thanks for remembering me.And I must tell that Qt is not much known in my country and I'm sure I can't find it in my country's shops.Now Our universities teach MFC.
And no I'm not a professional programmer.

RH-00
9th November 2009, 21:35
No, I'm not a professional. I don't even refer to myself as professional, I prefer to use the word "competent." Professional just seems so...stuffy.

squidge
9th November 2009, 22:05
I'm a full time software engineer, but I wouldn't call myself professional. Experienced, yes.

Tanuki-no Torigava
12th December 2009, 03:55
I can refer myself as professional system (not really GUI) programmer. I started in 1988 on a crappy Mac clone from Bulgaria called Pravetz with Basic and latter with Asm. It was the only way to write stupid sprite-based graphics. Then I graduate a couple of universities. One of them was Tashkent State Technical University, Faculty of Applied Math. So I started there and got a chance to gamble with perforated paper.
In 1992 when I pulled some jobs for US NGO I started to use Linux first. Yeah, it was Slackware 2.0 or 3.0. And here came the C language from UNIX flavor. And a lot of UUCP based utilities. In those old times we did that on our laps. Not so much nice utilities. Then I moved away from programming and start to work as telco engineer, project manager, architect, executive, government official and in the very same moment I felt that I've been loosing myself. After considering a fact that the world has a lot of bad managers but just a few good engineers I quit my last positions to get back into programing and software development.

Last 5 years I spent on Linux distributions, GPS tracking systems and software PBX systems.

ChrisW67
29th December 2009, 09:15
Full time occupation: Check
People pay me for code I write: Check
Working with other people's code: Check
Competent: I like to think so, but still learning
Guru: No, not enough recent practice in any one thing
Wysota's level of Qt knowledge: No
Slightly wrong in the head: it helps!

Programming started with BASIC and Z-80 assembler circa 1983. Four year engineering degree in Digital Systems and Computer Engineering (Pascal, FORTRAN, other bits and pieces) . Three years coding/QA for real-time acoustics programming software in Coral 66 (//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_66). Ingres, Sybase, Oracle DBA for 7 years, and UNIX admin throughout. Coding for simulations in astronomy post-grad studies. A miscellany of small coding exercises to scratch many an itch. Now doing a port from VB3 and VB6 to Qt of some of the finest spaghetti code ;)

SkylineBob
7th January 2010, 20:15
According to your definition I am a professional programmer. Though I like wysota's definition better. Currently I have to work with code, which was also written by a 'professional programmer' (your definition), who should rather has gotten all his fingers broken than given access to a keyboard. :mad:

It would seem the complier can't parse "professional programmer". Use #define. lol.

franco.amato
14th January 2010, 22:41
I think the difficult is not write code in C++, Qt, assembler, pascal, C or visual basic.
The difficult is study the problem with a pen and a paper, study the "algorithm".
Then this can translated in one of the existing programming languages.

waynew
19th March 2010, 21:38
Yes, paid for Oracle programming - sql, pl/sql, forms and reports starting in 1995.
Prior work in machine language, assembler, Fortran and Basic. Also Java, and now C++/Qt - currently working on a gui database program.

JovianGhost
20th March 2010, 19:20
Hobbyist coder here. Been coding as a hobby since I was a young'un. Everything I know, aside from my first exposure to programming, is self-taught.

My first real exposure to computers was when I was 10 years old. My parents, bless them, realized back in the day (late 80s/early 90s) that computers were going to be very big in the coming years so they enrolled me in a programming course. It was me and 3 other youngsters in a former janitor's closet learning BASIC on Apple IIe. After that course finished I was hungry for more, so when we got our first computer shortly after I began to code right away in QBasic. :)

Of course, being as young as I was, and considering the state of the Internet back in the early 90s, my exposure to "real" programming was very limited. Then one day my dad brought home a book on C, which I had never heard of. I stared reading it, understanding it, and over the next few years I exposed myself to computers and programming as much as possible. Everything I know today was self-taught, based on reading books, talking to others and reading online.

Fast-forward to today-- I was working on a project recently in C#. I got to a certain point and realized that .Net in general is ridiculously slow, and for the graphic-intensive stuff I'm doing, is insufficient.
I switched to C++, and after debating on which framework to use, settled on wxWidgets. But after awhile I started becoming increasingly frustrated with it, seeing as how it's quite difficult and cumbersome to do basic things like custom events, and the poor documentation, I switched to Qt. I fell in love with it almost right away. :D

gregoryd
31st August 2010, 08:56
Even though I studied in the field and did some heavy coding during college years I went to take on a different job and have been distant from professional coding. Still do it casually to learn something new or to help out a friend in need.