

ZZüy – A Lesson In Perseverance - martinrue
http://martinrue.com/2011/09/17/zzuy-a-lesson-in-perseverance.html

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dot
I'm always impressed by people who programmed before the answers to
programming questions were so easy to find (basically before stackoverflow :).

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to3m
Back then, it was code, the streets, or the pit. That is, if you didn't get
eaten by a bear. You quickly learned to fix your problems yourself, because
you had to.

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jgeralnik
As much as you must have hated Jason for what he did, that guy has a great
sense of humor.

As long as nobody ever does something like that to me.

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ThaddeusQuay2
It should have been "ZZüy – A Lesson In Language Choice". If he had stuck with
BASIC, he would not have had to endure the tortured route to success that was
necessary with C.

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william42
If he had stuck with BASIC, he might not have had the protocols he needed to
write what he wanted.

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ThaddeusQuay2
"If he had stuck with BASIC, he might not have had the protocols he needed to
write what he wanted."

Perhaps, but today, you can likely call out to the shell for anything which
your language doesn't provide. Need a webpage? Use cURL. That's what I will
do, if I decide to use this new language that I recently discovered.

<http://agena.sourceforge.net>

"C was nothing like BASIC. It was far more exciting and looked much cooler
with all its obscure syntax and low level semantics."

His "About Me" says that he loves simplicity, yet his choice of language seems
to have been due solely to being seduced by flash. A tremendous amount of bad
code has resulted from decisions made in such an impetuous and shallow manner.

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martinrue
Just to add some context: the fascination I describe with C is from the
perspective of a 15 year old learning to write his first real tool.

And, in fact, I knew nothing else at the time. What I essentially describe in
the post is a learning process – not the events of a professional developer
making a reasond choice of the best language to use for a particular problem.

Simplicity is something I've come to appreciate exactly because of such
experiences early in my career.

