Old Dog .. Wants to Lean new Trick

[Hans Tucker (Hans)]

Anyone into Coding? Were you self taught? If so, what was you choice of languages Python, C++ ... and what was your reference source e.g. Online material

[mura_gadi (Steve)]

Did you want to learn a code for a reason?

If its just to dabble, Basic and SQL are very powerful common interfaces that are fairly forgiving and reasonably transferable.

Basic will allow you to run batch files, simple coding etc and sql is great for extracting data.

If your in it for fun, may I suggest "R" thats awesome for looking at and extracting all sorts of things from datasets.

[Peter Ward]

Funny how the language has changed.

Once upon a time it was called: computer programming.

[Tulloch (Andrew)]

If I was starting again I'd probably start with Python.

There's lots of online resources, PyCharm is a good interface

[JA]

Originally Posted by Hans Tucker

Anyone into Coding? Were you self taught? If so, what was you choice of languages Python, C++ ... and what was your reference source e.g. Online material

Wow, you take me back with that question...

I remember as if it were yesterday lectures in Computer Science in a HIGHLY* raked lecture theatre at Melbourne University with Professor Poole and others and using FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal, Basic, C in UNIX, Assembly Language, etc.. as well as using some other mainframe engineering applications (think punch cards and mark sense cards in some cases) using finite elements in the areas of , Solids, dynamics, heat transfer and fluid mechanics. It was all good fun at the time.

The *very steep and very large lecture theatre was great for testing paper plane glide characteristics - I was always amazed by the "hang time" of the flying ring!

Best
JA

[Hemi]

Self Taut…
Lots of flavors of basic in my tweens on the ZX80, then an acorn electron, then a BBC micro. There was a Commodore 64 somewhere. Finally some Visual Basic on a 8086 then a 286 PC…spent a summer holiday during med school writing a program to read electrical nerve signals from decorticate cats.

Bought my son an arduino kit a few yrs back, but alas no interest, ended up learning a bit of C mysel! Made an electronic focuser for the ES102 with it. But it was crap and bought a ZWO EAF! Give it a go Hans, probably won’t change your life, but it’ll be fun!

[Hans Tucker (Hans)]

Thanks all for your replies. Yes it is more for self interest spurned on after a Systems/Project Engineering course that used a Lego kit coding kit as part of the practical component of the course. Years ago I completed a few subjects at Swinburne University on Robotics & Mechatronics, unfortunately being in e Military at the time and moving about the country put an end the study.

[RB (Andrew)]

Machine language rules.

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by Hans Tucker

Yes it is more for self interest spurned on after a Systems/Project Engineering course that used a Lego kit coding kit as part of the practical component of the course.

I'd suggest you take a look at Arduino - the hardware is really cheap, and readily available from Jaycar, eBay, Amazon, etc. There are thousands of "recipes" available to get you started on any project you can think of. The official website https://www.arduino.cc/reference/en/ is very well-documented.

The coding language is C++, so it is a modern structured computer language, and the skills you develop can be translated into other languages if your horizons broaden.

[mura_gadi (Steve)]

Originally Posted by rb

machine language rules.

01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01111001 01100101 01100001 01101000 00001010

[RB (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by mura_gadi

01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01111001 01100101 01100001 01101000 00001010

01010100 01001111 01010011 00100000 01110110 01101001 01101111 01101100 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101100 01101111 01101100

[Zuts]

Originally Posted by mura_gadi

01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01111001 01100101 01100001 01101000 00001010

V2h5IHNvIHJ1ZGUgOik=

[julianh72 (Julian)]

4920736565207768617420796f752064696 420746865726521

https://www.online-toolz.com/tools/t...-convertor.php

[Zuts]

Originally Posted by julianh72;
[url

https://www.online-toolz.com/tools/text-hex-convertor.php[/url]

lol, no hints allowed

[Hans Tucker (Hans)]

Originally Posted by mura_gadi

01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01111001 01100101 01100001 01101000 00001010

01010011011001010111011001100101011 10010011001010010000001100011011000 01011100110110010100100000011011110 11001100010000001010000011011110111 01000111010001111001001000000100110 101101111011101010111010001101000

[sil (Steve)]

Originally Posted by julianh72

I'd suggest you take a look at Arduino - the hardware is really cheap, and readily available from Jaycar, eBay, Amazon, etc. There are thousands of "recipes" available to get you started on any project you can think of. The official website https://www.arduino.cc/reference/en/ is very well-documented.

The coding language is C++, so it is a modern structured computer language, and the skills you develop can be translated into other languages if your horizons broaden.

+1 to this, and start with basics, Many people use the word coding to mean almost anything these days even html. But its best to learn if you have a target result you can work towards. even the simplest task will have challenges you can learn in debugging when things dont work as you expect or you want to improve the performance or you want to make it modular to work with something else or you get a crazy idea to add to it at 3in the morning. And this is just with a text output program, if you want a graphical interface and interactivity with a user those are simple to think of but huge to write yourself. And writing yourself forces you to think for yourself, not just expect to take some code from someone else and have everything solved. Its the problem solving yourself thats of benefit to you, it will help you in any spect of work and life where a problem arises it gives you skills to think creatively and efficiently, just using others stuff teaches you to be dependent on others to do your work for you. All of this is language independent, whatever language you learn in is irrelevant a course starting from dot should still give you the methodology skills you need to work through any problem in practical terms. The workforce doesn't need people who understand X language, jobs needing that are usually a business has an old legacy system and the person looking after it left so they just want a slave to keep it running . Plus there are so many languages that have common roots and often you find the same code is present in a bunch of languages anyway so moving from one to another is easier if you learn one for yourself well you can pick up others fast where you need to and certainly understand reading what the code is trying to do.

Arduino is really cool and you get to learn practical electronics stuff too. One of my early Arduino project was The Ringo robot, It could do some things with its sensors like line following. Sure I could buy a line following toy robot if thats what I wanted, but I wanted to learn to code. First problem is the hardware is fixed so at times I wished it had other sensors in other places, so I was forced to think how to better use the limited hardware It came with, then try to find and understand the sensor limits like how thin or dark a line had to be in order to be detected it doesnt automatically detect any old line it was jut basic IR sensors so I had to learn to see how the sensor sees in order to code for detecting then the speed it can detect becomes another. Limitation as a moving robot can easily just be moving too fast and go over the line. Then how does a line compare to empty space like a table top edge to avoid falling off the cliff. So much extra stuff comes to mind as you code and test and having something physical to observe and test with and you find all sorts of problems you’d never consider. So its a really engaging way to keep you coding andwith the community as you learn. The Ringo came with line following code and I eventually tested theirs against mine. I intentionall started from scratch with my own and never looked at theirs, when I did I saw they used a different apptroach order to the sensors than I didso you have different people tackling the same problem in difference ways. Both producing a working result. So I started to play with refinements to make mine faster and drive better a line circuit without going off course etc. I made a le mans circuit, very abstract but based on lesarthe as my test track trying to work out ways of deciding to accelerate without knowing the course (you could code to a track shape but scale up you want self driving cars to tackle wherever the road goes safely) and I tried to use different colours to see if i could colour code road ahead. Your imagination is the only limit. Arduino code is a loop it just runs through so theres a challenge if you want to retain information otherwise its lost and recalculated each time through, but maybe you want that for some information but not others, you constantly get strange hurdles to figure out. Which is a great practical challenge for you to learn, you might find others solved similar issues in different ways. Some might give you better options to expand with . After I had my robot zipping safely around my track I wanted to work out how to time it and designed and built an ardunio timer box, it used ultrasonic senors to detect the ringo passing the “finish” line and time each lap, I used a wheeled map measuer to measure the circuit length then I coul get funky and work out speed in m/s and kph, fastest lap time, avg lap time, distance run etc and display on an lcd screen for me. The reason Arduino is in schools everywhere now is because its so power as a learning platform and yes some come with an apps with blocks you place in line to build up a programs which simplifies learning to write code yourself for children but still and arduino robotics kit will be a great place to start for anyone wanting to learn to code anything in any language. But python is also great and maybe php if you are thinking workplace practicality, Regardless start with a beginners learn to code level course and dont turn away because they seem to write simplistic things, but it the methodology that you learn in these courses , what they are building is useless to you learning and if you skip it because its too simple you learn nothing and are a waste to humanity ;p

Yes you can learn on your own or attend a course. The difference is you really, If you are lazy and get distracted and bored easily you are not likely to learn anything on your own and a class is probably what you need. It has to be something you want deep inside not just because you want to be trendy and tell people you’re a coder and show off, nobody cares. And you will probably show off to people who have been coding for decades doing real coding.

If you buy books try finding a good reference book (that looks like a dictionary with all the code terms in alphabetical order for easy reference, its always essential to have a reference to quickly look the syntax of terms you havent used much, that and a starting from scratch type book to hand hold you through understanding the methodolgy of how to code, how to debug, how to optimise etc and work through it cover to cover. For years I’ve used Khan Academy (free online traning), just to learn things that interest me that I never learnt in school, or to relearn stuff Ive forgotten its an awesome resource so have a look at what they have that might help you out anything related to the basics of computer programming will be vital regardless of language. They probably have Python courses, maybe not arduino. Almost nobody programs anything with compiling involved anymore, its more something scriptable and often meant for web based applications.

Anyway good luck.

[muletopia (Chris)]

forgo
fortran 2
fortran 5
machine code Uart driver
Algol
I did try Simula but did not like it
DGL a Data General language (precursor to C++) very good
C++ self taught from Borland C++ manual
15 years Unix C++
15 years LInux (Ubuntu many releases)
The documentation of Ubuntu C++ is widely available, built in and various on line

forae. The Linux debugger Valgrind is a very powerful and easy to use tool.


Chris

[sil (Steve)]

I forgot C++ which is good, but when I started it was Pascal and Fortran the Various flavours of BASIC but if you’re starting from zero. Today I would save Python is the way to go. There are tons of free online resources for many languages even online IDE (integrated Development Environments), lots of free computer based IDEs too (these tend to give you an interface to write code, some form of debugging tools and a way to run the code too. If you are wanting to create say a windows program, C++ is probably still the path to take. Really just “depends” like I said earlier how you code is typically identical, You have certain ways to define constants and variables and ways to call those, ways to interact with numbers ways to interact with text, date formats etc how to translate formats between type so you can do stuff with them. Interacting with storage and display is also universal but done specific ways for every language. Pogramming and coding/scripting languages are all related so the basics of how to code are universal, “What is a variable” has the same answer in every language, “How to read/write from a hard drive” is different in each one though, but sometimes the same. As they all are related to each other, some were offshoots to avoid copyrights of earlier ones, some were created to be public domain versions “compatible” with the commercial ones so the same commands are present and used the same way, some were created to run on specific hardware, some under specific operating systems. Some written to do certain things in particular like work with large data sets or large number crunching. There is no such thing as a single universal language. If you have a specific task in mind then let us know. I think either C++ or Python will be better suited to what sort of coding you want to do. If you just want to be a tv hacker who rattles the keyboard to produce a program that replaces NASA and all Defense systems, well thats just impossible, though having good typing skills is important and unless you have a use in mind its also a skill you’ll lose. Maybe you just want/need a scripting language not a programming lanuage?