Hi Eli,
> Just so that I (we) can get a better grasp of your experience... have you
> ever used any kind of Linux/Unix system before 3 months ago?
Well I started with Easycode in 1967. It was a language I really loved
taught by an excellent instructor. A few weeks later I was taught Cobol
by a hardware manufacturer's tutor who didn't have a clue. However I
grew-up to love Cobol. I believe it takes at least 2 to 3 years to
become good in Cobol and to visualise solutions in Cobol coding.
Appreciate the advantages of compiled rather than interpreted languages.
Have worked on H-120, H-1250, H-200, HB-61, HB-64, HB-66 and Level-66
and Level-69 variants plus others like DEC 11(I think).
Played a long time ago with B and BPCL. Hated SQL when it was invented
by IBM but now use some of it with PHP. Never written in C or any
variant of it. Disliked MASM becase of the manner M$ structured the
source code.
Loved the BBC Micro; had a model B+ with 32K memory. Programmed in 6502
and a bit of Z80 and could swap out an entire user space application on
a BBC macro doing some nifty machine code programming. Really do love
BBC basic for its superior facilities and flexibilities. Would love to
use it on Linux. It was better than many of the different basics I
programmed. Also wrote in GMAP and other assembler languages.
Appreciate the intricacies of low level languages.
Self-learner, comptent, articulate programmer who always adds comments
so I and my successors can understand the coding and its logic. Dislike
bloatware and unstructred programming.
Mensa IQ but, 15 years later, still haven't sent my first cheque in.
Will very likely do it soon when I can find the original paperwork.
Briefly looked at Linux circa 1999 and my immediate reaction was its
Windows for Adults.
Currently doing plain web sites and databases. A recent venture was the
entire local electrol roll on the Internet (with lots of security) and
faster and better than the local council's expensive package. All this
without a single JOIN, VIEW etc. because I design databases for fast
retrieval and am never shy of adding indexes to ensure instant retrieval
and display. Have other packagers too.
I could go on longer but its probably boring to the others. I just love
programming and producing good systems. I seen and continue to see lots
of expensive crap used by organizations which, had I written them, I
would be deeply embarrassed ashamed. However in English local government
wasting public money seems to be their primary goal.
I got into programming by accident. When asked to do an IQ test I
refused. Then someone else said he would do it, I knew he would come
last so I changed my mind and did it. I came first and for the grand sum
of £2 extra a week I became a programmer. That was before the days of
keyboards, screens and disks. We had 80 column cards, paper tape, lots
of tapes and a punchroom which always inserted more errors into our
coding than we wrote on the coding sheets ourselves.
Lastest public venture is asking ACPO to get their Cable and Wireless
contractor to syncronise the PNN's mail servers HELO /EHLO with the IP
address' host name. I don't like bypassing EXIM's good security features
to allow any address ending with .pnn.police.uk to be accepted. I would
prefer them to fix their servers or change the A record.
