Do you Code? What's your preferred language/platform?

[Oceander]

Just out of idle curiosity.  I spent most of the last two days rejiggering the forum's theme to create a refreshed look.  That required rewriting some significant php on several of the template documents, and, of course, the css styling.

Php I'm pretty comfortable with.  Css I hate; I can see the potential, but it seems to me that it's still too tied to the outmoded concept of laying out a printed page, with everything flowing from the top left to the bottom right.

In high school (many, many moons ago), I learned FORTRAN and pascal, taught myself a little bit of COBOL to impress a girl (don't ask, 'cause I won't tell), and in the last eight years or so picked up html, php, and javascript.  I can read c++, but can't afford the compiler/IDE needed to easily write it.

At this point, based on that, I probably like php the best, if for no other reason than that it's free and, since it's an interpreted language, I get almost instant gratification.

[Ancient]

I like the new look.  I'm a database guy, so SQL is my #1 language.  I'll leave it up to you if that is "coding" or not.

[roamer_1]

I'm top flight in batch scripting, Started there in DOS... Went to Basic, fairly advanced, to build the tools I needed that DOS didn't provide.

Found Pascal to be more sensible so I went there...
The natural extension into Delphi came next, but I am afraid I never did get the hang of OOP - Still an inline coder to this day, and I am most comfortable in D6

Messed with AccessVB to build my own bookkeeping for my business, WSH and VBScript as batch helpers...

Pretty good in HTML4, but I hate CSS, and haven't had to learn HTML5, though I want to - Probably my winter project to resurrect my website.

[Oceander]

I'm top flight in batch scripting, Started there in DOS... Went to Basic, fairly advanced, to build the tools I needed that DOS didn't provide.

Found Pascal to be more sensible so I went there...
The natural extension into Delphi came next, but I am afraid I never did get the hang of OOP - Still an inline coder to this day, and I am most comfortable in D6

Messed with AccessVB to build my own bookkeeping for my business, WSH and VBScript as batch helpers...

Pretty good in HTML4, but I hate CSS, and haven't had to learn HTML5, though I want to - Probably my winter project to resurrect my website.

OOP seems to be something useful that got overhyped as a panacea for everything.  It has its uses, but in many cases it's not needed and simply ends up creating needlessly complicated code.

Scripting in Powershell - Windows' replacement for CMD - is a lot of fun (so I'm a bit of a geek).  It basically has almost full access to all of the assemblies that regular applications have, so you can in fact write some fairly complicated programs in it.  If I recall correctly, one of the developers even had a mini-webserver example in a book he published that was written entirely in Powershell.

[Oceander]

I like the new look.  I'm a database guy, so SQL is my #1 language.  I'll leave it up to you if that is "coding" or not.

SQL is, in my book, definitely a form of programming.  It's not just passively pulling data out of the database in raw form; you can ask the database server to do some pretty sophisticated massaging to the data before it returns the results.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

I code: VBS (which I love BTW, weird I know), C#, C, and PHP. This is for serious attempts.

I have a CS degree and have coded in LISP,VB, assembly, and C++ for class there, some 15-20 years ago.

I have written some smaller shell scripts and DOS batch files for quickie solutions. Nothing too serious.

Want to learn Powershell and TCL.

[bolobaby]

I'm an IT executive now, so I do less coding and more management. Nonetheless, I can code if I have to, but I try to avoid it these days. Since I've been in the business so long, I've been exposed to just about every language.

Most recently, I've managed both Java shops and C# shops. Frankly, I find C# to be a vastly better coding experience than Java. On the flip side, I like the way Java manages deployments better. I also like Java application servers better than IIS. Both have their uses, and in some ways they are nearly identical. I can cross train a C# to Java in no time flat.

From a pure coding perspective, though, it has to be C#. The IDE, tools, libraries, and ease of implementation on large projects makes it a winner. I was very excited when Microsoft bought Xamarin and added it to Visual Studio.

(Front-end frameworks, like AngularJS, Meteor, ReactJS, etc are another question altogether...)

[r9etb]

I spend most of my time in C++ ... No idea how many lines of code I've accumulated, but it's a lot.

[Polly Ticks]

I don't code anymore, as I morphed into project management a number of years ago.  Prior to that, I was a regular code monkey, working on applications in CICS, IDMS, COBOL, and SQL.  When I achieved the Teradata Certified Master designation 13 years ago, there were only approximately 200 of us in the U.S.  Not sure how many there are now ... I haven't really kept up with it all that much since I stopped coding.

[Elderberry]

I degreed in computer hardware. I learned assembly, Basic, FORTRAN and pascal. I programmed in assembly and C, but I spent my career in integration, test, CM, and QA.

[roamer_1]

OOP seems to be something useful that got overhyped as a panacea for everything.  It has its uses, but in many cases it's not needed and simply ends up creating needlessly complicated code.

Yep... Classic inline code training dictates tight and right - I really have a hard time with spaghetti code and lots of flotsam... Things seemingly unavoidable in OOP styled programming. I know it saves time (I guess), but the trade-off is a larger executable, and all that extra real estate is canned code and complication - which rubs me wrong. Just a mindset that I find impossible to overcome. It goes against discipline for me.

Scripting in Powershell - Windows' replacement for CMD - is a lot of fun (so I'm a bit of a geek).  It basically has almost full access to all of the assemblies that regular applications have, so you can in fact write some fairly complicated programs in it.  If I recall correctly, one of the developers even had a mini-webserver example in a book he published that was written entirely in Powershell.

Believe it or not, I have only taken a couple runs at Powershell - I am so very well fitted in cmd scripting, with long standing functions and modular pieces (I write in a modular fashion, and save all my baknbits with that intent), with templates that are so well developed, that anything scripting-wise that I might attempt would be most quickly served up in cmd... And that is the main point of a script, isn't it?

There really isn't anything practical that I can't do in cmd (+basic, wsh, vbs, toybox), and for anything more complicated, I am more likely to write in Delphi/Lazarus... So the necessity of learning PShell has been lost on me. Probably just because of being n00b, while being so well versed in cmd.

[roamer_1]

I programmed in assembly [..]

That's the thing I missed that I really wish to have learned. I grew up in coding marveling at how powerful ASM was. All those tiny 64kb exes floating around the bbs... amazing tools, packed with features, and as small as a fair sized batch file. Steve Gibson's SpinRite is a fair current example.

Sadly, finding an elder geek, proficient in ASM, and still willing to teach it has been pretty hard to do. And I find myself deep enough in my ruts that going off-track is getting hard to do - Something I accused old programmers of back in my yoot. Funny how that comes around.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Programming in ASM is pointless and stupid for 99% of applications. I'd fire anyone who suggested it. It's a language prone to unreadability and spaghetti code.

However it does have it's uses on occasion.

[Restored]

Groovy/Grails, Java, Oracle PL/SQL, SQR, SAS, COBOL, C. Also unix scripting and VBScript.

[Oceander]

Programming in ASM is pointless and stupid for 99% of applications. I'd fire anyone who suggested it. It's a language prone to unreadability and spaghetti code.

However it does have it's uses on occasion.

Of course it isn't necessary for 99% of programs; I don't think anyone suggested that.  However, it does have its uses.  Optimizing certain pieces of code is sometimes impossible without being able to write a routine directly in ASM.

Somehow I managed to get a copy of the assembly cartridge for the old Atari 800 and learned a little assembly programming on that.  For that machine certain things had to be written in assembly because writing them in BASIC (the other cartridge I had) resulted in programs that were intolerably slow (my first attempt at a game, written in BASIC, was so slow you could see the image creep sideways as the screen refreshed).

One thing I remember that was really cool was that one of the computer magazines would have a monthly game or program for the Atari that was all in numeric code; you would enter the numbers from the listing in the magazine inside a BASIC program, and out would pop a program that was actually useable.  The one I remember the best was a downhill ski game where the objective was to dodge the trees coming up at the character.

The Atari was also primitive enough that it was possible to change random memory values in the entire memory; nothing was "protected" from the vagaries of the user.  PEEKing and POKEing the memory to see what happened was a good way of getting an idea for what was happening under the hood.

[Oceander]

Yep... Classic inline code training dictates tight and right - I really have a hard time with spaghetti code and lots of flotsam... Things seemingly unavoidable in OOP styled programming. I know it saves time (I guess), but the trade-off is a larger executable, and all that extra real estate is canned code and complication - which rubs me wrong. Just a mindset that I find impossible to overcome. It goes against discipline for me.

Believe it or not, I have only taken a couple runs at Powershell - I am so very well fitted in cmd scripting, with long standing functions and modular pieces (I write in a modular fashion, and save all my baknbits with that intent), with templates that are so well developed, that anything scripting-wise that I might attempt would be most quickly served up in cmd... And that is the main point of a script, isn't it?

There really isn't anything practical that I can't do in cmd (+basic, wsh, vbs, toybox), and for anything more complicated, I am more likely to write in Delphi/Lazarus... So the necessity of learning PShell has been lost on me. Probably just because of being n00b, while being so well versed in cmd.

If you've got all the tools down and honed to a sharp edge, I agree that there isn't much reason to change over just because there's a new toy around.

I first got into powershell not because it could be used to do system administration (what it's supposed to be intended for) but because i could write programs in it that would execute immediately - I'm all about instant gratification.  At the time what I was trying to do was to get at the metadata in jpg image files and wrote several powershell scripts that allowed me to do just that.  I also wrote a script that would take an older pdf file, extract and decompress the text data, and spit it out as a plaintext file.

[kevindavis007]

I'm an IT executive now, so I do less coding and more management. Nonetheless, I can code if I have to, but I try to avoid it these days. Since I've been in the business so long, I've been exposed to just about every language.

Most recently, I've managed both Java shops and C# shops. Frankly, I find C# to be a vastly better coding experience than Java. On the flip side, I like the way Java manages deployments better. I also like Java application servers better than IIS. Both have their uses, and in some ways they are nearly identical. I can cross train a C# to Java in no time flat.

From a pure coding perspective, though, it has to be C#. The IDE, tools, libraries, and ease of implementation on large projects makes it a winner. I was very excited when Microsoft bought Xamarin and added it to Visual Studio.

(Front-end frameworks, like AngularJS, Meteor, ReactJS, etc are another question altogether...)

Your lucky, I have been trying to get out of coding and into management..

[r9etb]

I really have a hard time with spaghetti code and lots of flotsam... Things seemingly unavoidable in OOP styled programming.

Yeah, that's the underlying problem of OOP... Many's the arrogant coder I saw drawn to destruction by its siren call.  It's not so much OOP, as lack of discipline when using it.

Within strict limits, however, it's extremely useful.

[kevindavis007]

I mainly code in PHP.. However, I do know Python, Java, and C#

[roamer_1]

[...] lack of discipline when using it.

Boiled down, necessarily always the truth of it, in all things code. :)

[roamer_1]

If you've got all the tools down and honed to a sharp edge, I agree that there isn't much reason to change over just because there's a new toy around.

Well, sorta true, and why I am slow adopting it... But, being a service tech, I'll have to understand it... every box that comes across my bench is a mystery, and hard telling what went on to break it... to include every sort of scripting a dumbass teenager can come up with, or be talked into loading... So at least as a vector, I need a reasonable knowledge.

I'll get there. I just doubt I will be as enamored of it as my IT Admin friends...

I'm playing a different game.

[bolobaby]

Your lucky, I have been trying to get out of coding and into management..

@kevindavis

Ha! To tell you the truth, if I could dig ditches for a living instead, I would.

I'm actually between positions right now. I'm at the point where I will only consider positions where I have a true seat at the table, like CTO. At the same time, I'm not really looking, because being an IT executive sucks eggs.

Despite the title, you are treated as a short-order cook. Product always wants work done faster, but often won't compromise to create a reasonable solution. You'll spend time defending velocity while some product schmuck is demanding the umpteenth re-skin of your site, despite the fact that the re-skin doesn't really generate ROI. It just looks "better" to their aesthetic. Meanwhile, engineers tend to be some of the smartest people in the company. They'll have half-a-dozen ideas that can move the needle *right now*, but are treated like second-class citizens. You have to claw and fight to be heard. That only serves to give you a reputation for being "hard to work with" because you aren't being obsequious to the product organization or the rest of the business.

All this is happening while you are building up tech debt due to the pace that has been commanded of you. You're never given any time to go back and deal with the tech debt, but - holy sh!t - the day the site goes down, you'll be sitting in the CEO's office explaining what went wrong, whose fault it was, and how we can "make sure it never happens again." Just forget any recommendations to handle tech debt - that's off the table. No, no, no - you need to ensure that you have more code reviews, and better governance to things going to production... so long as you don't miss a date.

And let's not forget the people you manage. They're great. They're some of the smartest people you'll ever meet. They are also a unique class in the business world that range from OCD to ADD to insomniac manic-depressives. No one in upper management appreciates the fact that you keep a talented team working for the company despite the engineers getting 20 calls a week from recruiters offering new jobs with more pay.

Engineering management is basically all the responsibility for everything that happens in a product/tech company with very little REAL authority to actually change things.

Sigh.

I had a couple drinks tonight, so I'm ranting a bit.

Right now, I'm just hoping I can earn enough money trading stocks to never go back.

[kevindavis007]

@kevindavis

Ha! To tell you the truth, if I could dig ditches for a living instead, I would.

I'm actually between positions right now. I'm at the point where I will only consider positions where I have a true seat at the table, like CTO. At the same time, I'm not really looking, because being an IT executive sucks eggs.

Despite the title, you are treated as a short-order cook. Product always wants work done faster, but often won't compromise to create a reasonable solution. You'll spend time defending velocity while some product schmuck is demanding the umpteenth re-skin of your site, despite the fact that the re-skin doesn't really generate ROI. It just looks "better" to their aesthetic. Meanwhile, engineers tend to be some of the smartest people in the company. They'll have half-a-dozen ideas that can move the needle *right now*, but are treated like second-class citizens. You have to claw and fight to be heard. That only serves to give you a reputation for being "hard to work with" because you aren't being obsequious to the product organization or the rest of the business.

All this is happening while you are building up tech debt due to the pace that has been commanded of you. You're never given any time to go back and deal with the tech debt, but - holy sh!t - the day the site goes down, you'll be sitting in the CEO's office explaining what went wrong, whose fault it was, and how we can "make sure it never happens again." Just forget any recommendations to handle tech debt - that's off the table. No, no, no - you need to ensure that you have more code reviews, and better governance to things going to production... so long as you don't miss a date.

And let's not forget the people you manage. They're great. They're some of the smartest people you'll ever meet. They are also a unique class in the business world that range from OCD to ADD to insomniac manic-depressives. No one in upper management appreciates the fact that you keep a talented team working for the company despite the engineers getting 20 calls a week from recruiters offering new jobs with more pay.

Engineering management is basically all the responsibility for everything that happens in a product/tech company with very little REAL authority to actually change things.

Sigh.

I had a couple drinks tonight, so I'm ranting a bit.

Right now, I'm just hoping I can earn enough money trading stocks to never go back.

I understand but I'm kinda getting bored of being a developer.

[Restored]

I understand but I'm kinda getting bored of being a developer.

I've been doing it since 1981 and it's the best job in the world. Nothing ever stays the same. Transitioning from COBOL and JCL to unix and Groovy/Grails has been a fun ride.

[Taxcontrol]

Take a look at Python.  It is a great language to learn on and it incorporates many of the OO concepts.