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[Davio]

Something I often find with games like Dominion, is that it seems to attract a lot of computer programmers. We programmers like to challenge ourselves to find elegant solutions to difficult programs and Dominion provides a way to do just that.

To us, programming is almost like poetry and the cleaner the algorithm, the better we feel about it.

So I decided to create this topic for general programming chit chat.

Are you a programmer?
Is it your job or just a hobby?
What kind of programming do you do?
Are you working on any exciting projects?

I'll start off.


I've been a professional (employed) programmer for almost 4 years now and in that period of time I've worked on a wide variety of projects with a wide variety of programming languages. In the early days of my working life I used a language called "Progress OpenEdge". This is a language you will only find in businesses who have been using their homemade software for a long time. It's rarely used for new projects. For me it was quite a switch as I had learned Java at university, but I picked it up quite easily.

After a couple of years, I started specializing myself in C# and .NET as I like those best. I like working with Visual Studio and I'm a Windows guy. I don't have anything against Apple or Linux, I've just used Windows my entire life and feel comfortable with it so I don't feel a need to switch over. Besides, a lot of companies we do business with use Windows and Windows applications, so it's easier for me to use it as well. And I don't have anything against Java, but like I said, I just wandered in the C# direction. If more of our clients would have demanded Java applications, I might as well have gone with Java.

Recently, I got my Microsoft certificate signed by Steve Balmer himself which says I am a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist when it comes to .NET 4.0 Windows Development. I'm very proud of this achievement, although I doubt its value. It looks nice on your resume, but doesn't say much about your day to day programming skills. The certification, in my view, just says how good you can learn from a book and do practice exams. I'm studying for my next certificate which is Windows Communication Foundation and hope to end up as a Microsoft Certified Professional Developer for the Windows platform.

With the new technologies arriving in the form of Windows 8, .NET 4.5 and the move towards more mobile devices and more targets for applications, I may make a similar move in the near future. I like to stay on top of current and future technologies. Not just because it increases my position in the market, but also because new technologies are a keen interest of mine.

Currently I'm working on programming the software for an embedded computer to be used in taxis. A law has been passed in the Netherlands specifying that all taxis should have this computer. Lucky for me, the company where I do this is only 5 minutes from my house. 

[Grujah]

I am in college, studying to be one. So, it is to be job in the future.

I still haven't got a real job, so my knowledge is kinda scarce and academish. I'm a Linux guy, so technology of choice so far is Java, but I really should learn new stuff (like Python).

[Qvist]

I'm a programmer with knowledge in Java, Perl, PHP and C.
I used to do software engineering, but switched to web engineering.
Since 4 years I'm working for a company which is IT service provider for a big company.
Mainly I develop templates for the CMS we're using.

[dondon151]

I program functions and scripts in MATLAB...

[Kirian]

Does PHP count as a programming language?  If so, then I was a freelance programmer for many years in PHP/mySQL, but at this point it's all hobby work.  If that doesn't count, then... I guess I used to program in BASIC, does that count?

[michaeljb]

Like Grujah, I'm in college studying to be one, but I have also been fortunate enough to get a student software developer position in one of the research departments at my university, so it's also my job now, sort of. By that I mean we seem to spend far more time configuring projects to deploy properly and make sure they're using the right versions of other pieces of software and stuff like that than actual programming.

I've done work with Java, C and C++, Python, and have learned a bit of Ruby at this new job. I also learned some CoffeeScript like a year ago when I was contributing to rspeer's simulator but then school and life got busier so I haven't done that for a long time.

[mnavratil]

I have been a professional software engineer for slightly over 7 years now. I got my Computer Engineering degree from the University of Minnesota and now I mainly specialize in back-end server and communications code; mostly written in c or c++. I'm also mildly familiar with the likes of c# and Java, but haven't used them much in a professional environment.

Currently I am employed at a large corporation writing enterprise data back-up software. Before that I wrote software that helped monitor and control electrical power systems.

[Davio]

Does PHP count as a programming language?  If so, then I was a freelance programmer for many years in PHP/mySQL, but at this point it's all hobby work.  If that doesn't count, then... I guess I used to program in BASIC, does that count?

Yes, I like to be lenient to include more programmers.

Heck, even typing good old HTML (with frames, marquees and blinks) can be considered programming.

Don't go here if you're suffering from epilepsy or likely to suffer from seizures or don't have a good Javascript blocker.

[Kore]

I'm a developer for a social gaming company called Phoenix Age. We have a (pretty successful) game on the iOS and facebook called Castle Age and I work mainly on the objective c side of things. I only recently started working in objective c as I was previously developing in C# but it's been pretty easy to pick up so far. Since a good chuck of the game is server-side, I end up using php, actionscript and sql almost more than objective c depending on what I'm working on.

We have a lunchtime board game/ccg group and we occasionally break out dominion. I've got the Dark Ages box with me and we plan to give it a run tomorrow.

[GendoIkari]

Programmer here. 6 years professional experience. Mostly .Net; both ASP.Net and Windows Forms. A couple years ago I learned Objective-C and iOS when my company decided to get into the iPhone game. I'm back to mostly .Net now, but still get to do iPhone/iPad from time to time.

I've had an interest in programming since I was 7 or so... started messing around with LogoWriter at that time, then moved on to Visual Basic.

[Davio]

Visual Basic, really?

I'm a C# guy and VB looks just so.... ugly, ugh.

And no WPF? I used to do Windows Forms, but WPF has made databinding and event handling so much easier. I found that WPF makes using the MVC or MVVM pattern a lot more natural.

[GendoIkari]

Visual Basic, really?

I'm a C# guy and VB looks just so.... ugly, ugh.

And no WPF? I used to do Windows Forms, but WPF has made databinding and event handling so much easier. I found that WPF makes using the MVC or MVVM pattern a lot more natural.

Oh don't get me wrong, I hate VB. But to a young kid interested in this cool thing known as "programming", it looks awesome... this was long before C# was around, so C++ without much of a graphical designer was the main alternative.

I haven't had a chance to learn WPF yet... our company actually just landed a new project for which we'll use WPF for the first time; though I don't know if I'll be working on it. I do use the ASP.Net MVC framework; and it's replaced Web Forms as far as I'm concerned.

[Axxle]

pro programmer.  c++, unrealscript.  work at psyonix.  did work on mass effect 3, gears of war, bulletstorm...

And this game for the mobile:



yay /drunkpost

(I guess europe dudes like us for SARPBC )

[Ozle]

10 PRINT "Hello world!"
20 GOTO 10
Run

Thats about my limit

[Axxle]

10 PRINT "Hello world!"
20 GOTO 10
Run

Thats about my limit

That code will run forever (I think...).
You are a terrible programmer. 

[Ozle]

10 PRINT "Hello world!"
20 GOTO 10
Run

Thats about my limit

That code will run forever (I think...).
You are a terrible programmer. 

It's intended too!

[SwitchedFromStarcraft]

It's been 40 years, but I started with Basic, later used Fortran, COBOL, ALGOL. Thought briefly about brushing up ahead of the Y2K fizzle, as they were paying lots of money for experience in those dinosaur languages.

[Young Nick]

Want to learn in college.

[Davio]

Let's necro this old thing to dump some of my irritations.

I switched jobs around a year ago and am now programming mainly in Java.
I finally took the time to edit my project to make it Maven-friendly. Ugh, Maven is such a horrible implementation of a perfectly valid idea, but the alternatives are also not very enticing and not the de facto standard anyway.

My main reason for doing this was because I want others in the office to be able to checkout the project from SVN and compile/package a WAR without Eclipse or some other IDE. So if they have to make adjustments during my vacation, they will be able to do so.

I packaged some custom libs which don't live in any repository straight into my project. Not an ideal solution, but at least it's very easy to just grab the thing from SVN, run "mvn package" and voilá, they have a WAR they can deploy.


Let's bring up the old C#/.NET vs Java debate as I have pretty decent experience with both: I think both (C#).NET and Java are quite mature languages and frameworks. Java has suffered from a bad rep and deservedly so, because of security issues, applets which kill your browser, horrible APIs (java.util.Date anyone?), etc.. but is slowly climbing out of that black hole. I mainly use application servers like Glassfish to run my J2EE applications and it's easy enough to program some web services and servlets, so I'm quite happy with it.

The latest C# programming I did was with WPF/XAML and I found it to be quite cumbersome, but I also think pure desktop apps might be a slowly dying breed. The language and .NET framework did feel very solid to me though.

[GendoIkari]

I too switched jobs around a year ago (a year ago this coming week, in fact). I'm an independent contractor working from home now; it's awesome. Still .Net; doing all web now (MVC).

[markusin]

I'm doing a research internship right now. I've been tasked with developing an IVR (interactive voice response) and doing research on the technologies needed to build one. IVR systems are still useful in places without broad internet access.

Strange world, IVR. Most of the documentation on IVR tools is old and/or poorly maintained. I found a nice plugin for Eclipse that abstracts VoiceXML to a GUI, but it has limitations and poorly maintained documentation. It makes me feel so alone in my struggles.

[Davio]

I know that feeling.

Sometimes I am overjoyed that I find a question on Stackoverflow about the same problem I'm having, only to find out I posted it in the first place.

[markusin]

I know that feeling.

Sometimes I am overjoyed that I find a question on Stackoverflow about the same problem I'm having, only to find out I posted it in the first place.

At least I don't have that problem, as I only stalk StackOverflow.

[GendoIkari]

I know that feeling.

Sometimes I am overjoyed that I find a question on Stackoverflow about the same problem I'm having, only to find out I posted it in the first place.

Ha, I've had that same thing happen to me a couple times!

[jsh357]

My problem with StackOverflow is that I always think the solution I found is actually the right one, then some edge case makes the slight difference between mine and the poster's worlds apart.