Defenceless Dinosaur Distress

[anthonyms666]

I was a computer programmer from 1982 to 1985. It was on an Apple II with 64K
memory and the 6502 processor. I only programmed with the original version (I
assume) of BASIC. I loved it. Writing my own programmes, for my own needs,
using my own format and my own math. And I loved writing more complex ones
that required you to document and debug on paper. Here's the problem:

I have ideas that I have on paper. I would like to start using my current pro -
cessor's speed to work on projects. But with this Windows operating system,
there is absolutely NO WAY that they make it easy to just poke away and
start programming, like I used to do with BASIC. Not much on-line to
act as a tutor either.

So here it is: is anyone on this site interested in pointing in the direction of
how to program a (DELL dimension L733r with a pentium and Windows 2000)
machine - as in - you use THIS as your platform, and you load the language
like THIS - buy a book and go from there, and I'm set.

Go ahead and have a good laugh at how clueless I am, but despite the appearant
lack of knowledge of New Hardware, etc., I am a fellow geek.

Call me Tony - I'll be back.

[Narue]

>But with this Windows operating system, there is absolutely NO WAY
>that they make it easy to just poke away and start programming, like
>I used to do with BASIC.
If you keep comparing modern programming to what you used to do with BASIC, you'll likely not end up happy. I'd recommend not trying to be a BASIC programmer in 2008[1]. Instead, pick up something relatively new and actively talked about like Python where you can just poke away and start programming after the interpreter is installed.

>Not much on-line to act as a tutor either.
You're expecting something that doesn't exist then, like a complete lack of change since 1985. :icon_rolleyes: Programming has changed, and if you want to keep doing it, you should update your skills to match.

[1] Visual Basic is going strong, but that's a whole different beast from classic BASIC.

[Denniz]

I also started my programming using basic, but it was on an IBM XT machine with 256Kb RAM and no harddisk. Those days they have basic interpreter on their ROM BIOS.

I don't know where had you been for the 20++ years but programming and software development as a whole evolved a lot. Since then I had moved over to QBasic, then to Pascal, with some dBase and Clipper, and then to C, and then C++, and then to Visual C++ and Java and PHP with mySQL which I am still using now.

Technology evolves. We need to evolve too.

[Ene Uran]

I really enjoy Python, take a look at:
http://bembry.org/technology/python/StartProgramming.pdf
and:
http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread20774.html

The whole Python package is open source and free from Python.org. If you decide to get Python, download the Windows installer package (.msi) of version 2.5 or 2.6. Stay away from version 3.0 since it will make a few changes to the syntax and is not in its stable production release yet. The Python forum at Daniweb is quite active and somebody is always ready to help.

[GrimJack]

if you want to learn a language, try this site - I have friends that say they chose their programming language by trying each of the problems in the different languages. take a look, it could help you decide it could be fun.