What do you do with your knowledge?

[L3fty19]

Well It's seems that a lot of people talk about using these programming languages but what I wondering is what do most of you do with these skills. I mean i got some Q-Basic knowledge and some Visual Basic.net skills but what kind of programs do you make or what do you do that is cool and fun? Just a fun topic to see what some newbie programmers do and what some pros do also. Thanks, Scott

[Dani]

When I was like fifteen years old I made a typing tutor in Visual Basic :) It worked very similar to Mavis Beacon ... it had lessons and calculated words per minute and accuracy. Plus there was an extra feature where you would type any letter and it would tell you what finger you were supposed to use.

[L3fty19]

cool, where did you learn that at 15?

[Roberdin]

You still got the source? :P

[Dani]

I have hard copies of some of it and I think an old .exe of the finished project somewhere.

[Dani]

I thought this might be an appropriate place to "spam" ;) So I'm going to just say it ... it would be great if any of you guys could help out our community by posting some of your VB code to our Code Snippets forum. It's currently the only empty forum here and it would be great to get it started.

[samaru]

Well It's seems that a lot of people talk about using these programming languages but what I wondering is what do most of you do with these skills. I mean i got some Q-Basic knowledge and some Visual Basic.net skills but what kind of programs do you make or what do you do that is cool and fun? Just a fun topic to see what some newbie programmers do and what some pros do also. Thanks, Scott

There's tons of things you can do. Pick any program you use and copy it. If you start from scratch, you'll learn a lot. Here are some projects I started off with:

Address Book
E-Mail Client
Project Manager
Chat Program
Games
Groupware (Think of any program a big company would use for record keeping.)

[samaru]

I thought this might be an appropriate place to "spam" ;) So I'm going to just say it ... it would be great if any of you guys could help out our community by posting some of your VB code to our Code Snippets forum. It's currently the only empty forum here and it would be great to get it started.

I would, except I don't like how it's layed out. Also, I assume it's only for C++? It'd be cool if you set up something like this: http://www.hotscripts.com

[Dani]

What's wrong with how it is laid out? (Constructive criticism here please) The C++, VB, and Java forums each have their own Code Snippets subforum. You can post a thread there with the CODE tag or with an attached file (i.e. a zip). In addition, the code snippets can be rated. What's so bad about that? ;)

[samaru]

What's wrong with how it is laid out?

It's layed out like a forum. A lot of snippet/code web sites don't follow this format. Go to http://www.hotscripts.com. Click on a category, like "JavaScript." You get a list of titles for the scripts only, with no user comments underneath, just a brief description. You then click on the title of a script, then you get more information about the script. I think the user comments should go right there.

The C++, VB, and Java forums each have their own Code Snippets subforum.

How come snippets are only limited to "Application Programming" and not "Web Languages"?

[Dani]

The reason that code snippets are currently limited to Application Programming is because there already are so many sites such as HotScripts that are much more popular and already have tons and tons of webdev-related code available.

Not only that, but because not very many people are contributing. I thought maybe I would limit it to just c++, java, and basic/vb for now as an experiment to see if it was a good idea, and then expand in the future if it turned out to be a success.

Perhaps I'll change the layout of the code snippets forums in the near future, to be more script-like ;)

[alc6379]

The more the merrier!

I've got a nice Python script I could post, provided I could find it... I'd be happy to post it, once I dig it up. That's assuming you decided to allow scripts in this forum!

[samaru]

Yeah, I would definitely post snippets, but not if it's currently layed out the way it is, forum-like.

[scarecrow]

L3fty- cool topic.
as far as ~what do most of us do with our skills~, I can't speak for all, but my experience has been that I haven't really blazed any trails in particular, or even helped the human race along that much.

In some ways, its not so much what what you've learned along the way(whether it be in a class, or out there doing it by the seat of your pants in the real world), its how far you want to take what you learned. It all depends on you.

I started out as mechanical engineer, but after some good honest advise from a guy I knew that was, I decided it wasn't for me. Later that year, I gave programming a shot, and (here it is- I was insane: ) found I loved the idea of a world of infinitesimal possiblilty that could exist if you could manipulate code (I blame Mountain dew and monitor radiation for my then dreamlike condition).

I tackled a few languages, and was programmer for a while, but I wasn't up to challenge; too draining for me. I didn't have "The stuff". But what I learned in those few years about networking, hardware, applications, and politics the behind the technology is priceless.