Programming

Chris is Cool

Christopher Gutteridge — 2011-11-02T14:20:27Z

When I was about 11 or 12 (year 6 or 7?) a girl called Charlotte showed me something she'd done on a BBC Computer:

10 PRINT "CHARLOTTE IS COOL" 20 GOTO 10 RUN

And the computer did it, it printed what she'd told it to all over the screen until we hit the "Escape" button. I of course then nipped over to another computer and wrote it again, but with CHRIS IS COOL instead.

Maybe it was a bit of a lie, I wasn't cool at all, I'd just become a computer programmer and back then nobody really knew what a big deal programming was going to be. There was no web, no Google, no Windows, no iTunes, but starting programming was the single best thing that ever happened to me. I found I loved writing computer code. For me it's a bit like playing guitar -- some people work very hard to get good, other people just love playing guitar and do it every day, and don't even realise they've been practising. It was like discovering there there's a "grown up" LEGO, where you design your own bricks to build really complicated cool things.

I love doing it, and the amazing part is people are willing to pay me for doing something I love. I still write tons of stuff for fun on weekends, though. As I got into my twenties I started finding that it's even more fun if what you do helps other people, or makes them happy. I wrote a few fun scripts to do handy things in the (then) new "GIMP" art package, and some of my scripts were added to the official version. As GIMP comes with many versions of Linux, so when I see a Linux CD-ROM I always feel proud that I helped make a teeny-tiny bit of it.

Because of my love of programming I've got a well paid job, travelled to different countries to share ideas, I've met amazing people, and made friends with quite a few of those amazing people.

I'm 35 now, and that two line computer program was over 20 years ago! The computer I'm writing this on has 4 processors inside, each one is 800 times faster than that BBC Micro computer, and has over 50 Thousand times as much RAM!! By the time people now in year 7 are my age, computers will be that much more powerful again, and we'll need some amazing people to programme them.

The best musicians are the ones who started practising young, and never stopped. It's the same for computer programmers.

First program

Julian Fletcher — 2008-07-30T06:40:00Z

When

1982

Where

State middle school in the West Midlands, England

What

Wrote first computer program in BASIC on a white plastic Sinclair Z80.

The code went something like:

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"; 
20 GOTO 10 
RUN

The addition of the semicolon at the end of line 10 enabled the words "Hello world" to be displayed horizontally as well as vertically across the monitor screen. Its omission would just leave the text printed vertically.

First experience with a computer system

Neil Stanley — 2010-03-11T13:00:47Z

This was in the sixth form of a Grammar School in Kent in 1970. A new general studies option was programming. We wrote (very simple) programs in Fortran; then had to use 'port-a-punch' machines to code the information onto cards. These 80 column punched cards had 40 pre-loosened columns of holes - you placed them in a holder and used a stylus to punch out the holes, encoding the ASCII for the letter you wished to use. The cards were then sent off by post (to Medway Tech I think) and came back with a print-out which commonly hadn't worked. You then corrected the errors and tried again - turnaround was at least a week. Towards the end of term we were told we were going to use 'arrays' - I wondered why we wanted to rub things out (SMP called them matrices, you see). This experience led me to studying Maths and Computing at Uni (Surrey) and then training (Preston Poly) to be an Maths and Computer Studies teacher (in Cheshire). I've never really escaped.

Computing to Art and then ICT

Keith Sibley — 2010-09-14T03:26:28Z

My first experience of computing was being sent, by my A level Maths teacher, on a weekly day release course at the local Tech (Smethwick Tech College) in 1966/7. The computer was an ICT 1202 and the language if you could call it that was TOTIAC (a binary based system), the machine was valve based and had a huge tube with a fan in it which led out through a window in an attempt to keep it cool. This fairly often resulted in the whole thig shutting down through overheating. The few of us who were sent actually found it interesting if a bit bizzare. This led us to another course using an Analogue machine who's details have long disappeared into the mists of time. Why our head of Maths thought it a good idea we were never told... but.. it did lead me into the Early Commercial computer world when I left school.

I got a job working in a company who had a large mainframe (ICT1301), starting as an operator then training to be a programmer using MPLII and then up to an ICL 1901 using COBOL, Fortran and B3500 assembly code. We were writing all of the first bespoke packages for the industry which was fun and very creative but set us apart a bit from my ex classmates who began to look upon me as a bit of a mad scientist or early long haired hippy geeks. We were the original Y2K bug programmers.

I left the commercial world after 6 good years of program creation to train as an Art Teacher (I know,poles apart, but by then we had written most of the good stuff and were reduced to program maintenance, a boring occupation and painting was my other passion). After teaching Computing as a second subject on a TP I began to revive an interest. In my first real teaching job as an Art teacher in 1978/9 the government saw fit to giving an RM380Z to every school that could provide a member of staff to look after it, as it were. The canny Headmaster of the school I was at remembered my CV and proceeded to bribe me out of the Art room with a scale post if I created an IT course and learned how to program and teach with the 380Z (a really good little system).

Gradually Computing took over completely, and I've been Head of Computing, Head of IT, Head of ICT, ICT Coordinator, ICT Consultant from large Secondary/comprehensive/Grammar/Private schools in the UK and abroad and I have been setting up educational networks, teaching Computing, Computer Science, IT, ICT, ICDL at all levels in England and, for the last 20 years, here in the Middle East. In a way computers have chased me wherever I have been, I am still planning on going back to my Art but that will be another day. So from the vague idea, that a computer course would benefit us poor A Level maths students, of a Head of Maths in the late 60's came a career both in industry and education that has lasted over 40 years and still going.

As teachers we can make a difference to our students, one of my ex pupils sent me an e-mail a few years back that told of his new job and his first appraisal. He was asked who has had the most influence upon him regarding this job, and he told me he had to say my name, his job? Working for Microsoft in Silicon Valley, U.S. not sure that it was exactly a complement though.. working for Microsoft..hmmmm- smile.

Computer appreciation

Bill Gibbon — 2010-09-20T21:10:00Z

"Computer Appreciation" was a 10 hour module as part of the Maths course when I was training to be a teacher at Northern Counties College in 1972.

We did some simple Basic programming on an OU paper tape terminal in the corner of one of the small studies, but mostly we played tic-tac-toe or navigated a lunar lander (which on a paper printout was quite tricky).

However, my friend Derick and I had also signed up to do a creative writing option, with the fabulous Betty Watson, who eventually became Betty Rosen. She had been part of a team of judges for a recent Daily Mirror's 'Children as Writers' competition and had been allowed to keep all the entries - tens of thousands of them - all in cardboard boxes stored on the stage - and she wanted them classified. That was easy - the whole group just sat and read each one and filled in a small form. Then of course she wanted to analyse them ... Derick and I looked at each other and said 'we can probably write a simple computer program to do that'. Mad fools.

We eventually had to learn the far from simple SPSS language and fill out and check hundreds of programming sheets and it must have cost the department a fortune in punched cards and processing time - but the experience was incredible. Although it pre-dated by a long way my '80s obsession with Seymour Papert and Logo, it was this first experience of controlling the power of computing to solve real problems, rather than being controlled by it in the 'press any key to continue' mode that was to follow, that established my ongoing philosophy.