In high school I took Spanish, Typing and "Computer Math". I still hablo un poquito espanol, and even though typing was the hardest class I took, I'm thankful, I sludged through the semester every time I address a keyboard. But most of all, I'm thankful for computer math. It was actually a class that taught BASIC language. I never learned any other language except for USER RPL for HP calculators (I did take a semester course on FORTRAN in college - a summer minimester I'll never get back). As much as I love BASIC, finding modern equivalents can be tough. Over the years I've tinkered with Just Basic and found it pretty easy to slide into from my years of tinkering with BASIC, but here lately I've used it for a couple of tasks that really saved some time.
Today, I needed a program that could take some pipeline depths entered in inches in the description of about a hundred points we collected. I didn't want to do this manually, so I wrote a program in Just BASIC that read the ascii file, converted the depth from inches to decimal feet, applied the converted depth to the elevation, added 1000 to the point number and output a text file. It took about an hour and a half to do, including various checks.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a program that reads RW5 files and creates a "D" file for post processing a post processed kinematic file recorded during an RTK session in Ashtech's GNSS Solutions.
Both of these programs save me time or enhance our capabilities. Neither of them could have been begged for from a software company because they are too specialized. Just BASIC fills a nice gap for creating applications that EXCEL (which I also love) just isn't up to. If you haven't checked it out, look it up.
I took a computer class in College, 1978. It was before they had monitors. If I remember right, you type a line and hit enter and the printer printed out that line. That's about all I remember from the class. Excel is my weapon of choice.
James
perl
Most of the custom computing I've done is written in AutoLISP, because it's the one language I'm most familiar with. However, if I were to make myself learn one more programming language it'd be perl. I've hacked together a couple of little utilities using perl, just enough to realize how powerful it is, especially when dealing with ASCII text files. The kind of tasks Shawn mentioned can often be done with a few lines, and people who are fluent in it are able to dash off those apps in just a few minutes. Highly recommended.
I took C++ in college, and learned Visual Basic 6 on my own at about the same time. I'm very thankful for that computer programming skill I've learned. It's nice to be able to write programs that do things the way you want to do them. I wrote a front end for my business database that keeps track of clients, projects, accounts receivables and billing, prints bills, monthly/yearly income and projections, etc. Lately I added the ability to export a list of project addresses in way that can be geocoded and imported in Google Earth, for a visual reference of projects I've done in an area.
I still use VB6, but I learned recently that you can download Visual Basic Express 2010 for free (non commercial use, of course).
I skipped typing class. Instead, I established and ran an independent research project with Dr. Graham Giese where I used an old transit to stadia locate the shoreline of a very dynamic beach. I prepared a research paper and presented it at UMass Amhearst. Better than ASDF JKL;
I used Fortran in college (77-81) and we did it on punch cards, each card being one line of code. Then we discovered a 110 baud teletype in the EE lounge that made things much easier. Wrote quite a few programs simulating aircraft motion from 82-87 when I worked in the defense industry. Fortran & Basic are pretty similar, though the formatting was tougher in Fortran.
i also started programming in college using fortran. similar to basic.
problem with programming language is that every version has its own syntax.
even you know the basics or basic, you can get bogged down in the syntax.
so what i did was to just stick to a single brand.
microstation has its own basic module. good thing about it is that it also
has a "Macro Recorder" function that lets you click a series of commands from its
menu of processes that you accomplish then it writes these steps in its
basic syntax. i then review this created macro and from there i could then modify
it to suit my own needs.
similar also to microsoft office VBA although i find it more challenging to learn VBA.
Typing was the most useful class I've ever taken, easily.
:good:
My typing class was the most useful also. I do, however, remember telling the teacher, “why do I need to learn how to type. I am going to college and when I get out, I am going to have a secretary to do this for me.”
Well, I did go to college, but the other part did not work out so much.
Miguel A. Escobar, LSLS, RPLS
Shawn
I agree with you about Justbasic. I also learned programming in high school using basic. In the last several years I have been running the Linux OS.
and Justbasic will run fine under it. it has been perfect for small task like you mentioned.
Another alternative is to use FreeBasic it is a lot more powerful. with Glade interface designer and GTK libraries you can develop a nice cross platform application fairly quick.
As another quick note the Geany text editor has syntax highlighting, column select mode and other cool features.
I hear you. I really wished I had learned how to type in school. Certainly could have saved some time over the past 20 years. Guess I really use just two fingers on the left and and three on the right hand and right thumb for the space bar..
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is great for getting Excel to do things that it can't quite do on it's own, or where typing a messy formula into the cell day after day is a pain in the neck.
Borland's Turbo Pascal and then Delphi from the get-go. Probably written 20,000 lines of code for various purposes. I like it because it's strongly typed and quite readable.
Edit: A smidgeon of code for the 41C, back in the Joseph Bell days.
ok
