Coding

When I first started exploring the wonders of the Internet back in the fourth grade, I was simply amazed and curious. As such, I got into HTML and CSS, and a little bit of PHP. I continued doing these things, perhaps mimicing some Javascript things, but I never really knew what I was doing.

In high school, we had no special "computer science" courses. There was essentially one class - one semester was some C++, the other semester was HTML. I didn't bother taking the course, because: 1) I knew most of the stuff that was going to be taught, 2) I had other courses that took priority, and 3) the teacher was perhaps not the best one to be teaching the course. Either way, I was never really exposed to much else, aside from be curious with Flash, but I didn't have the resources I have today to acquire Flash and learn that ActionScript exists.

Coming to Stevens and being accepted into the Computer Science program, however, threw me in for a loop. MATLAB - while not legitimately used for programming, but a glorified calculator - was easy enough to pick up since (for some odd reason), it was very similar to some PHP (which was all I knew at the time, really). And then I learned Java. While I hear it get a lot of crap, it is an easy language, and it works.

Back then I knew of a few languages, such as Javascript (though really that's script), C/C++, mySQL/SQL/SQLite, SSI... but there are some that I have never heard of until my academic career here at Stevens. Call me a "newb," but it fascinates me as to how many different languages there are. For example, Scheme - one of the few banes of my existence, but I have a pretty intermediate grasp on it. Not that it's hard, but the idea of all the parenthesis and JUST parenthesis is somewhat daunting in the beginning.

I am now looking into learning Ruby, Python, ActionScript, and a few other languages. One of the languages I have to learn in class at Stevens is C, too. I learned a bit of basic Assembly last semester as well. Those were interesting.

I also find it interesting of a sort of "programmer instinct," I guess I could call it. If one knows a language, it's not too difficult to pick up the syntax and some basic principles/tricks of a language. For example, pointers in C.

You must be wondering where I'm going with this; to be honest, I don't quite know myself. I am just intrigued by the fact of numerous languages. I would write about something else, but I haven't had much time to do anything else of more interest lately. I'm also attempting to use this as some sort of vent for inspiration in order to think of some little projects I can do with some of these languages, because sometimes learning with just tutorials and the given exercises is not enough.

I will, however, make some sort of silly app for myself for Android, though, once I bother to download the SDK. I'll have to finish learning Flash and ActionScript, first, though, since that will be the most useful to me right now.

Signing off. Sorry for the useless rant. :D

~ Caroline