I work as a biomedical equipment technician. I get to mess with computers, but little coding is required. Sometimes Excel feels that way. :)

My training is biomedical engineering. I had the great fortune to work on a project to make an eye-controlled wheelchair. I coded it with MATLAB.

We took courses in C++ (6.0 -- .NET changed everything :D). But I've used C and BASIC as well -- and a few random languages periodically.

As for real accomplishments, besides the eye-controlled wheelchair, I made a Neverwinter Nights server with lots of custom scripts to do all kinds of fun things. The scripting is in C.

I also wrote a program in either C#.net or VB.net to help me write a book. It kept track of character, setting and special item usage chapter-to-chapter and also retained notes on all of those. I wrote all of The Darkest Wand with it. But then my computer glitched and I backed up the wrong files. So it's gone.

But that's about it. I'm playing with the idea of making a MUD client and building a MUD right now. I'm still working through ideas.

My original plan was to be a developer for MRI and CT software. But I changed my course so that I could be more of a family man. It was a good choice for me.

Right now, I want to learn how to write things like Barefoot Monkey's Essentials. We're using software right now at work and if I look at the code, it has lots of information I want to get at, but it's not displayed in a format that I want it (essentially, I want to print lists in a table, but our software doesn't allow that). If anyone knows where to point me to learn those skills, I'm all ears. I have no java experience, but I read a bunch in a book. Looked like easy stuff.

Well you need mostly a bit of knowledge about HTML5, JavaScript (which is not related to Java) and CSS. Pretty stuff is usually drawn using the <div> HTML5 tag.

A classic statement: there are 10 kinds of people - those who understand binary and those who don't.

I have that on a T-shirt ;-)

<div> is not really HTML5 ;-). It's been around since (I think) 1995 and standard (HTML 4.01) since 1997 (along with <span>).

Love that one...

True, but CSS integration is kinda recent i think.. anyway I haven't done a website in ages :D.

I've done assembly language for years, Atari Basic, Qbasic, C, D, and Java, autoit, PHP, SQL, etc. (Although I can do C++, I hate it).

Maybe not much of a story, but a long time ago when I was bigger in assembly language programming I wrote a program that took up 101 bytes (a .com file). Well it started at 1 and doubled the number over and over again spitting the output to the screen. I sent the output to a friend, who took it to their teacher. The teacher had it laminated and then used it in his classes and courses later...

Ahh the good old days...

CSS is from 1996...

Nice thread! I was starting to look for something like this here, on GOG forum. Great initiative.

I myself started learning to program Java, some HTML with CSS, a little JQuery, JavaScript, SQL. Doing this for 2 months now. I am intrigued, interested, frustrated and having fun all together. Most of the days I find myself working with NetBeans on Windows. And I still can't get used to using Linux.

Yesterday I was introduced to GIT - that is pretty handy little thing. And today I was shown how to use Maven. Did not get a hang of it yet.

That is as little about me as I can think of. Good to know I can find some fellow programmers here.

I've done a little Assembly coding on the C64, must have been around 1990. Never came around to really develop my skills though. My first code was BASIC on the C116, that was 1988.

I've done websites in PHP for many years, but tbh. I don't like the language. While easy to learn it's really not beautiful. On the other hand, my current work with ASP.NET MVC (5) shows how much overhead the MS stack really has. It's surprising how powerful a server (and how much RAM) you need to have a shop and a CMS running. Written in PHP the whole thing could probably run on a LAMP system half as powerful and still be twice as fast.
Depending on what you are trying to to... Try to understand Javascript before going to jQuery. jQuery is totally awesome, but it hides the nastier corners of Javascript from you - it's better to know what you're dealing with (and also it will make you appreciate jQuery more ;-))
Next I would look into a frontend library like Angular (which is quite the rage since a few years, unfortunately I never had the time to dig deeper into it). These are really useful because they structure your client code. Angular is a full fledged framework (jQuery is a toolkit).

Git is great, once you use it you won't want to go back to any other VCS... Like me, I came to love Git, but now I'm stuck with SVN again :-/

As IDE of choice for web development I would recommend WebStorm (or PHPStorm) by JetBrains. Sadly they are not free. But IDEs are a matter of taste, really.

I'm reminded that before PHP was in heavy use, Perl was the language of choice often for generating pages, and the whole CGI gateway thing that I never learned enough about in order to actually do anything with.

I recall working with ASP before a bit, and I hated the scripting language. Not only was it floaty in a way, but everything was by reference, no nulls, and tons of other issues. Working at a computer company one of the protocols was to explicitly specify if something was byVal or byRef on everything. So much overhead for so little return...

I got stuck in that era, which is why MaGog is a perl-cgi program.

Thanks for the input. I'll take a look at those.

Even if it was invented in 1996, I'm sure it's still useful today. :)

On that note, there's this mathematician who had this awesome idea of reconstructing 3D objects using multiple lines with varying densities. You make a plane out of the line and then average all of the planes out to get a slice of the 3D figure, and then duplicate that process infinitely to get a perfect representation of the 3D object. He did this some time in the early 1900s or late 1800s. His friends said he was wasting his talent and genius on useless math.

And then 50 years later some folks made a CT machine and his equations were right there waiting for them. His equations have saved thousands upon thousands of lives and given millions more several years to their lives to enjoy family and friends.

Just because it's old doesn't mean it's useless.

Yeah, Perl is really cryptic (origin of RegEx...). I've never worked with CGI.
The original ASP was horrible. ASP.NET was a little better, but the concept with generated code and "code-behind" and ViewState and simulating a stateful application... in a stateless environment ultimately very flawed.
ASP.NET MVC is pretty cool though, you basically write "normal" HTML with a little embedded code and C# for all the server stuff. And MVC is really my pattern of choice for web applications. I loved to work with Zend Framework too back in the day.
IMO C# is really one of the best languages ever created. Esp. Linq is extremely elegant and useful.
*Stands in awe*