Do you still code?

[Harrison]

Do any of you still do any programming?

What was the first programming language you ever used?

[Harrison]

For me I mainly use PHP and MySQL these days, with HTML 5, CSS, Javascript.

My son has started needing to use Python in his IT classes so I brushed up on that a bit to help him out. I do use some Python for Linux server scripts but not much. I've never really liked it as a language because of it's lack of structure. But I suppose that's what makes it easy for schools to give children a taster of programming after they have all used Scratch in primary school.

I started off learning BBC Basic at school in IT class in the 1980s. I still think it's the best version of basic ever created. And you can still use it to create programs on modern OSs as you can download it for free,

I then explored Basic on the Amstrad CPC and then STOS on the ST and AMOS on the Amiga, before trying out a few other languages that were free on cover disks. Last language I played around with on the Amiga was Blitz basic.

Professionally at university I was studying web development in the late 90s as part of my Graphic Design Degree so was mainly learning HTML, Javascript etc, but I focused more on the multimedia software Macromedia Director and learnt it's Lingo programming language, for which I then got a job making Director projects for Business to Business interactive presentations. I also started using Macromedia Flash from version 3, and from version 4 started using it's new Actionscript lanugage which was similar in functionality to Director but structured more like Javascript, They then added the ability to reformat Director Lingo into Javascript style structure, but as I knew Lingo really well I kept it as it was.

Since the demise of Director and Flash that ended that part of my Graphics Design and interactive multimedia career and those languages that I knew. I still miss working on those packages and there hasn't been anything released since to replace them or offer anything with similar ability or functionality, The internet has taken over, but for creatives there still isn't any design package to offer anything similar,

So what did you start with, and do you use any coding in your work or spare time still?

[Stephen Coates]

I'm self taught in BBC BASIC and MS QuickBasic but I'm not particularly good at either.

I taught myself a bit of 68k Assembly on the Amiga many years ago before doing some 68k Assembly at college (I was the only one there who had done any programming at all), but I never really got the hang of it beyond some very simple programmes.

I came to the conclusion I was better at hardware.

[Tiago]

I started with Basic. Learn a bit of C and Visual Basic.
Since 1998 i work with Cobol in Mainframe in a major bank in Portugal.

[Stephen Coates]

Just wondering, what are people's thoughts on AI programming?

I had a go with one of those AI things a while back. I asked it to write a programme in 68k Assembly to do a simple task and it did. It made lots of assumptions about the hardware because I didn't tell it to write it for a specific system, so the programme might not have "worked" as written, but it was certainly 90% there.

I know someone who is a software professional and he says he uses AI to write certain bits of code.

Also, has anyone noticed that the term 'coding' has become a lot more popular than 'programming'?

[Harrison]

Programming vs coding is an interesting thought and they have become interchangeable. We don't really do low level coding these days, and a lot of coding is internet based these days, with server side rather than directly targeting a specific CPU or chipset so not technically programming,

I've not actually tried using AI for coding yet, but it could be useful to create blocks of code to utilise for reference in your own code.

My wife uses CoPilot in Word recently for her Teaching work and that's really good for taking what you have written and polishing it into something much more concise without all the bits you don't really need. And it reformats the text to make it far nicer to read, wich headings, bullet points etc breaking down the points you made in the original text. That is very useful.

I will have to test out some coding for PHP and Javascript and see what it can achieve.