Sankofa

While having dinner with my teammates at the Shangri-La Plaza, we had a nostalgic conversation about our adventures in technology, particularly in programming. Just a bunch of geeks talking about geeky stuffs on a Friday night.

According to our Project Lead, he started his programming adventure by writing programs in BASIC on an Intel 486 computer a Sharp MZ80 Series (2 Mhz and 24KB of RAM). He also mentioned that he had once used a cassette tape to store his programs. He is that old (80+ years old in Programmer Years). Another teammate told me that his programming adventure started when he first discovered Visual Basic. For me, my programming adventure began when my elementary professor taught us Web Development (as in HTML) way way back in 1999. 1999 was the time when having an E-Mail account can get you laid . *I know, HTML is not programming! STOP BOTHERING ME*

After sometime reminiscing the days of Web 1.0, Visual Basic 4, Dial-Up Internet, mIRC, Hacked Unix Shell Accounts, Hacked AOL accounts and the Borland Turbo C Compilers, I suddenly brought up the topic of programming milestones — Those important events in your programming life that marks an important transformation. Those paradigm-shifting events that changed your geeky life forever. What’s interesting with this conversation is that everyone in the table can relate to each others milestones, its like everyone have the same programming milestones. Maybe all programmers have the same set of programming milestones? Like in life (as in real life), where we consider both College Graduation and Marriage as milestones.

Anyway, here are my programming milestones so far (Sorted by Date):

1. Arrays (1999)

I’ve previously mentioned that my first ever functional program is a tiny tool that can be used to help determine the winner(s) of a Millionaire’s Game (A Monopoly-like game). I made that tool because, most often than not, the players participating in the game will just agree that noone should win because they are just too lazy to “compute” for the winner.

I made that program in C using Borland’s Turbo C Compiler (TC.EXE) back in 1999. Back then, all I know are Console I/O (printf,scanf), IF Statements and FOR Loops! So its safe to say that I don’t know that Arrays even exists. Here’s how my program in C looked like:

#include <stdio.h>
 
int main()
{
	char Player1[100], Player2[100], Player3[100], Player4[100], Player5[100];
	int P1Score, P2Score, P3Score, P4Score, P5Score;
 
	printf("Enter the name of Player 1: ");
	scanf("%s", &Player1);
 
	printf("\nEnter the name of Player 2: ");
	scanf("%s", &Player2);
 
	printf("\nEnter the name of Player 3: ");
	scanf("%s", &Player3);
 
	printf("\nEnter the name of Player 4: ");
	scanf("%s", &Player4);
 
	printf("\nEnter the name of Player 5: ");
	scanf("%s", &Player5);
 
	//... You Get The Point!
}

I don’t even have an inkling that char Player1[100] is an array. I just know that Player1[100] is a variable that can store 100 characters. That’s it! But anyway, I was limited to copy-pasting similar block of codes to accomodate for each player. Even the computation logic was copy-pasted.

You can tell how happy I was when I learned of arrays.

2. Graphical User Interfaces – Visual Basic 6.0 (2001)

From 1999-2001, I have probably made five programs in C. Not all of them worked but some of them did – like my Hindu Arabic to Roman Numeral Converter and my poor attempt to simulate SM’s POS System. My first POS System have a pseudo-GUI. The “graphical objects” are made up of ASCII characters like all DOS-based programs and like most DOS-based programs, its barely usable.

When my High School Computer Professor showed me Visual Basic 6.0 in early 2001, all I can think about is this:

“Oh Shoot! Now I can make my program look like the *real* thing and sell them on the Internet and then I’ll be as rich as Bill Gates!”

Kidding aside, going from Terminal-based (Console) program to Windows Application is one of the greatest milestones in my programming life. Having your mom use your user-friendly POS system for your little business is very very rewarding.

3. Filestream – Writing and Reading Files (2002)

When my professor in High School taught me Visual Basic 6.0 and Graphical User Interfaces, I thought then that making your program look like the *real* thing is just the same as making your program *real*. Real as in functional. But it isn’t the same. Let’s face it, if your program can’t persist data, it is close to useless. So my dreams of becoming as rich as Bill Gates were suddenly crushed, at least temporarily.

Year 2002 was that magnificent year when I was able to force my mom into upgrading our old and broken home computer. I can still remember the *shiny* new specs of that computer:

• AMD K6-2 500 MHZ
• Seagate 20 GB HDD (IDE, 5400 RPM)
• ECX Motherboard (Can’t remember the exact model)
• 128MB SDRAM PC100/133
• Connectix 56K Dial-Up PCI Win Modem

That was the biggest and most important investment my mom made: A DIAL-UP MODEM! It was the very first time that I had unlimited (Unlimited Dial-Up Prepaid Card) access to the internet, at home. That was also the first time that  I had access to almost unlimited amounts of low-resolution P*rn images! Also, and most imporantly, that was the first time that I had access to the vast quantity of knowledge available in the Internet.

I can still remember that fateful summer day. I was making a simple tic-tac-toe game in Visual Basic 6.0, the game logic are all done and the game is already 100% fully functional. I gave the game to my brother to try it out and he asked me if there is a Top-Score list in my program. It made me think. How can I persist data even after the program was closed? Fortunately, the internet was there to help me out.

After a couple of hours searching and asking in the Forums, someone told me that I should write the data in a File and read it everytime the program is launched.

For the very first time in my entire programming life, I was able to persist data in a file! After 4 years of just working inside the RAM, I can now write stuffs on my Harddisk! A whole new universe of possibility was unlocked. I was so excited! Hundreds of idea came rushing into me. Suddenly I want to make my own Integrated Library System (OPAC), Sales and Inventory System, Dictionary and hundreds of different programs!

Now I really believe that I can make my program look and feel like the *real* thing. My dream of becoming as rich as Bill Gates is back on track!

Those are the three most important programming milestones in my programming life. There are also others but they are not as enlightening as the those three. The other milestones in my programming life happened when I discovered the following:

• Pointers
• Relational Databases (Microsoft SQL Server)
• Serialization (Marshalling)
• Socket Programming
• Cloud Computing (Web Services)
• .NET Framework

Also, another milestone. Today was the very first day that I celebrated our National Labor Day (May 1). It is funny that I celebrated Labor Day by coming to work.

Happy Labors Day Everyone!