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Discussion on: What Was The First Problem You Solved That Made You Feel Like A “Real Programmer”?

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Ben Halpern

Oh! This is a good one.

I had a few forays into programming—websites when I was younger, and some computer science in college. I learned to program in that context, but never really felt like a "real programmer", whatever that is. Basically I didn't think I could do it, hence dropping CS.

When I rediscovered the craft, I got into Ruby programming. Basically I wanted to make a web app and someone told me I should check out Ruby on Rails. Not a lot of extra context and fewer other popular frameworks at the time (I didn't shop around, I didn't really know how to).

In the past I had failed to build things because I tended to skip some steps and then not have any idea what I was doing. So I convinced myself I'd stick to Ruby until I really could program, then I'd move on to building the project I had in mind.

I felt like a real programmer when I found myself capable of building a crude prototype for the app I wanted in pure Ruby. I used a text file as a database. It didn't have a server, it was essentially statically compiled from the text file, but I could write to it from the program.

I didn't really have an idea of how it would fit together in a "production" context, but I had done it. I had built a true database backed application which rendered dynamic HTML and I had done it from first principles of learning the programming language.

I truly felt like a "real programmer". Actually, I think I felt more like a "real magician".

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Sebastiangperez

I finished my High school as a Computer Technician, programmer oriented, but i started working repairing PC, tech support until when i was working on a Rental apartment company in 2004, i saw my boss' wife that she was struggling with files and folders from the apartments and decided create an intranet using what i had there, an old pc with a IIS, ASP and Access, the old PC is what i was using for work.
Now i'm working as a full time programmer.

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Trevor Montgomery

🔥🔥 that’s awesome. I love ruby but unfortunately I use Java 😭

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Ben Halpern

Well Ruby has a way of kicking you in the teeth over some wacky scenarios. Enjoy some safety in types while you have it.

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Trevor Montgomery

Word, this is prob a sub topic, but do you ever see anything replacing java?

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Ben Halpern

Yeah, plenty.

Kotlin and Scala come to mind for obvious reasons. Swift, Elixir, Go, Rust, lots of newer stuff which can take Java's place in a lot of contexts where it's popular.

There's a long way to go, but I think Java will gradually trend down and have a lot of different languages take its place. And it will keep evolving and have a place forever. I haven't followed closely but Oracle v. Google can't have helped Java's place in the world.


via Stack Overflow

It seems like JavaScript is the only language with any kind of true moat on its popularity right now because it runs in the browser. And that will go away with WebAssembly.

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Ben Halpern