Many years of programming here as well, either as a hobby, while studying or for work.
My main driving motivator after 32 years in the industry is that I still love to code and do problem solving. I have been fortunate to have been working on interesting and challenging tasks with very nice people throughout my career.
And I still enjoy learning new stuff, so never stop learning.
A short chronicle of my linguistic adventures in the computing domain during this 40+ year-long programming journey, although some are just vague memories at this point, like "fingerprints on an abandoned handrail" (Bob Mortimer):
1. Basic
2. Assembly (6502 and 68000) C64 and Amiga Demo Scene
In the early 90s, I began my programming career by developing reporting solutions for a Construction Support System used in train and tram construction and assembly. This system ran on a VAX/VMS platform. My role involved creating custom reports which could be printed on the DEC laser printers. I programmed these solutions using FORTRAN and hand-written PostScript code, which I found enjoyable. To learn PostScript, I even invested in a set of PostScript books, including the well-known Red Book:
Saddened to hear of John Warnock's passing. His co-founding of Adobe and co-designing PostScript had an impact on solutions I designed and implemented in the beginning of my professional programming career. In the early 90s, I extensively used PostScript for reporting solutions on a bespoke Construction Support System which were used for designing and assembling trains and trams.
Those days, working with FORTRAN and PostScript, were foundational for me. To this day, the reference books from that era hold a place on my bookshelf:
Wonderful memories being part of the C64/Amiga Demoscene in the 1980s, an era of creativity, camaraderie, and global connections.
This marked the genesis of my coding journey, igniting a lifelong passion for programming that endures still, spanning several decades in the tech landscape.
A highlight, to this day, involved creating and releasing our Amiga Demo-Creator in May 1987:
Thank you for sharing your memories! That's a cool demo with a great soundtrack.
And I couldn't agree more - that era was such a carefree and imaginative period for many of us, filled with endless possibilities. As I approach 55 this year, I fondly look back on my programming journey that began in the early 80s. And like you, I too have never really grown up – always eager to explore, learn new things, and continue dreaming.
I believe maintaining this youthful mindset and spirit is essential for staying vibrant and engaged in life. Cheers to never growing up!
Back in early 90s I was working for a big international company using VAX servers and DEC laser printers in their engineering department. The wanted to have various types of graphical reports outputted based on data in their INGRES database. To produce those graphical reports I used FORTRAN and hand-written PostScript code. Did a fair amount of PostScript coding back then.
Remember I purchased a set of PostScript books to study. I still have them in my library:
I co-designed and developed one of the early SMS content platforms in Norway back in 2000. I had bought and read Programming Pearls, and used ideas from this book to implement number portability routing/handling when it was introduced for mobile operator phone numbers in Norway.
For me, coding in Assembly language during the C64 and Amiga Demo-scene in the 80s is the major reason that I went on to study Computer Science and ended up working as a system developer for the past 30+ years. One of my fondest memories from my developer experience is writing the first Amiga Demo Creator entirely in Assembly language back in May 1987:
I started programming on the VIC20 back when it was released, and moved on to being part of the C64 and Amiga Demo Scene in the 80s, releasing the first Amiga Demo creator back in May 1987:
Programming was my hobby and passion before I went on to study Computer Science, and subsequently working as a systems developer for the past 30 years.
Programming is still my hobby, and I use my free time reading up on and trying out interesting technologies and languages. I've also completed 30+ MOOCs since 2012 in my spare time. For me the thrill is the problem solving part and the journey towards a solution to a problem or task by applying both old and newly acquired knowledge. It's something like the thrill of waiting in anticipation for Christmas presents as child. I've been lucky to work with lots of nice people during my time in the industry. I hope to continue with my hobby after I professionally retire.
I've been practicing intermittent fasting for close to 2 years, with a 2-6 hour eating window each day. Most of the time the fasting period has been around 20 hours a day.
For a month now I've switched to one meal a day (OMAD), only eating dinner with the family. I only eat home made low carb meals. Being 50+ I've been able to keep the weight in check, BMI now 22.3.
Hunger or lack of energy is not a problem, it's more the I sometimes out of "boredom" want to eat to pass time. But since I do not want to break the routine, it keeps me from snacking.
I always feel a state of "serenity" during the fasting periods.
Since 2012 I've been keeping task files to document all the stuff I work on. Most are job related. This comes in handy when I need to re-visit something I've worked on previously, sometimes going several years back in time. The task files are plain text files which are quick to create and update, and I use Sublime Text or VIM to edit. I do both development and operational related tasks, and can work on many tasks during a day. The trick is documenting in the task files right away before the details are wiped from my memory. When looking things up, I usually search by file name, or content, or both. Having documented a task previously can save time when returning to a similar task at a later date.
I use a naming format for the task file, including the date and a short task description, e.g:
task.2021.12.23.short.task.description.txt
Number of task files created since 2012:
Task files: 18231
Total size: 350 MB
For each day I also create a worklog of the tasks I've been working on that day (including minutes spent).
Since 2012 I've registered 2540 daily worklog files:
ls -l task.????.??.??.worklog.txt |wc -l
2540
The worklog files are also used to estimate time necessary to complete similar or recurring tasks.
I've used this pandemic to only eat home cooked meals since March last year. WFH has resulted in me skipping breakfast and lunch, doing intermittent fasting for at least 18+ hours each day. And since this summer (2021) I've switched to one meal a day, as well as doing a few fasting periods lasting 2-3 days. I also try to do regular power walks. I'm currently practicing Wim Hof Breathing Method. All in all, since the lockdown in 2020 I've lost some weight (bmi now down to 22.8), reduced stress, feel overall better and sleep quality has improved.
It allowed others to get started creating demos by supplying:
* image
* sampled sound
* scrolling text
Not very advanced by todays standards, but unbeknownst to me at the time, turned out to actually be used by some groups to release their first Amiga demos:
My main driving motivator after 32 years in the industry is that I still love to code and do problem solving. I have been fortunate to have been working on interesting and challenging tasks with very nice people throughout my career. And I still enjoy learning new stuff, so never stop learning.
A short chronicle of my linguistic adventures in the computing domain during this 40+ year-long programming journey, although some are just vague memories at this point, like "fingerprints on an abandoned handrail" (Bob Mortimer):
1. Basic
2. Assembly (6502 and 68000) C64 and Amiga Demo Scene
3. C
4. Pascal
5. Simula
6. C++
7. Cobol
8. Wolfram Language (Mathematica)
9. PostScript
10. Fortran
11. QUEL
12. Visual Basic
13. Lisp
14. Perl
15. SQL
16. Java
17. AWK
18. Octave
19. Python
20. (S)ML
21. Scheme/Racket
22. C#
23. JavaScript
24. Scala
25. TypeScript
26. Haskell
27. F#
28. Erlang
29. Ruby
30. Clojure
31. R
32. Rust