Let's talk about coding.

[MetalRenard]

Howdy folks. I've recently begun learning to use JavaScript (still extremely new to this) but in the past I have used HTML and CSS several times and I know my way around them both quite well, thought I am a little rusty.

I thought it would be cool (and useful) for me to open this topic to talk about what I'm doing, how I'm learning and also to just have general discussion about coding so we can share ideas and I can ask more exerienced folks for advice (if you'd be so kind).
Sooo to start the conversation, tell me, what was your journey through learning to code? Which language did you start with and did you find it useful? What's your favourite language and why?

For me, so far, I've learnt the syntax for JS and I've started to look at W3school's tutorials: https://www.w3schools.com/js/ which are in depth including examples and practical knowledge of how to implement JS in HTML. My first experience with basic stuff (HTML/CSS) was in uni when I had to make a few websites for a minor part of my studies.

[kyonides]

Well, I also started with HTML and CSS long time ago when it was HORRIBLE, yeah, way back in the 90's. XHTML was the hot stuff with its weird frames that were kept in a separate section but screen readers weren't able to find them for they only knew about the main section, call it index, shop, contacts, etc.

For a time I dropped it for I didn't find it useful but some day my parents sent me to a so called HTML summer school and didn't find it weird, but we also used gopher and some other ancient tools in those days. Since a classmate smoked like a wh*** my beige shirt turned like brown after a single day at that school.

Later RPG Maker 95 showed up, I tried it, but nothing happened for it had no scripting. Plus I didn't know what scripting was at that moment. Yeah, then we found RM2K and RM2K3 but I could only dream on making a custom game for they still lacked something like scripting. I didn't even think on compiling and linking programs made in C or C++ for some unknown reason.

Once RMXP came out in 2005 o 2006, things were different. At first I found it weird that some text could change stuff just like that. Between August and October 2008 I was reading a help request on another board and for some reason I kept reading the script as if it were a story somebody had written. I even found the first bug in my scripting life! I pointed it out and people were kind of amazed that I could do it on my own.

Then I visited English speaking boards, met people like Trickster, who rarely showed up, SephirothSpawn, who I criticized for not teaching us some large amount of scripting stuff (even if he did it for free ), oh right, there was a crazy werewolf fan as well. Add many weird characters from HB and Venetia, a spriter or perhaps already a graphic designer.

My first script handled a window displaying real local time on screen. IIRC I also asked wulfo a few things back then. I just loved hashes but not arrays. For some reasons I first understood the usefulness of the Hash class in Ruby and then deduct how to use the Array. The key value pair concept fascinated me. Now you can just take a look around and find many scripts published by your beloved (or hated?) dark scripter.

About two years ago I went to another course where I learned HTML, CSS, JS and Bootstrap extension or plugin. I kind of liked it and knowing several programming concepts for playing with Ruby really helped me a lot. Sadly the day we were supposed to learn a bit of Ruby on Rails and Heroku, the instructor felt the other students were way behind us in scripting knowledge. (There was another guy that had worked with Rails for I don't know how long.) Honestly I really wanted to get my hands on Rails then. Anyway, I learned a bit of jQuery and preferred it over plain JS.

There they told me w3schools was the worst site to look for help on HTML, CSS, JS and Bootstrap. The instructor even showed us how he installed a javascript plugin on Chrome to hide any evidence of that website's very existence. Weird huh?

In the past I've tried making GUI for PC applications with wxWidgets, GTK, Qt, Tcl/Tk. I just disliked them all, but Qt4.8 had a working rubygem that would let me make windows with Ruby. I then started my KUnits Gosu actors and items and classes DB. (Even so I could easily do it with a CLI like Konsole or CMD, but you gotta be patient...)

Lately I've been dealing with Ruby, CRuby and now C++, mainly because of KUnits development. Sadly CRuby is fast but kind of incompatible with Gosu that offers many things via C++ compiled code, mess with stuff that is supposed to be displayed on screen and whooosh! Segfault has been spotted!

[MetalRenard]

Cool! You've been at it for nearly as long as I've been alive. Huhu
I guess that makes you an expert.
Is it true that w3school is useless then? I'm learning a lot from it.

Gotta admit you lost me a bit towards the end though!

[DerVVulfman]

I'm gonna throw you guys for a loop with my story.... I began with a computer sold by Mr. Jello Pudding himself. Bill Cosby promoted a system called the TI 99/4a Home Computer, a very basic system which was promoted as both gaming and an entry level programming system. It allowed you to write programs in BASIC.... and you used an actual TAPE RECORDER to store your programs. How long ago was this? Well, I made games when I was in High School based on Ghostbusters, the Last Starfighter and Star Wars. Yes, I was making very simple shooters in the early-to-mid 80's on something that made the Commodore 64 look like a Cray Computer.

Now during HighSchool, I wanted to take a computer course, but found out I needed to take a manditory typing course. Well, I type 80WPM... so Yep, I did okay. During the course, I became the teacher's guinea pig. If I couldn't figure it out.... NEXT ASSIGNMENT? I was given insight on BASIC (right), took Pascal (BARF), Fortran (PUKE), Cobol and Assembly. Oh, and a fellow classmate was allowed to play Wizardry in class... my first shot at seeing a true RPG Computer game.

Not that I wouldn't BUY others later.

My friend Carl who lived down the street from me got an IBM PC Jr which used DOS, and I later got a full fledged IBM PC that ran with DOS 2.0. Both of us started messing around, and tried to make a TOP GUN based game. We got the cockpit fine... though we only had FOUR COLORS AT THE TIME!!! Oh, we both kept upgrading our PCs, taking out Hercules Graphics cards, replacing them with CGA cards, replacing them later with SVGA cards... and so on. In the early 90's, I could swap out Cardinal Modems and replace them and their software in 10 minutes... they weren't plug and play back then. But we still did PC BASIC programming. AND We both messed with the Original "DOOM", making maps, graphics updates, and so on. Technically, it's when I got my username. He was gonna be DiMOOSE and I the Wolfman. Wolfman wasn't available at AOL... already taken, so DerVVulfman was borne).

I later went to a school called Yorktown Business Institute for programming, and had to work with the ... WANG.... computer. Seriously? That's the name of the system I had to make programs with? Well, they had teachers for Basic (HAHA), Cobol (HAHA), Assembly (okay... it was still annoying), and some others. The teachers could see I had more experience than others.... Actually, me and two others. We three were given assignments and (ROFL) told to beat it! We had extreme latitude that we could just hang out in the lounge, do the work, and come back while the others were still being lectured. Well... MOSTLY, unless it was something we didn't know about. But one teacher was so bad... WE THREE ENDED UP TEACHING THE CLASS! The teacher didn't know the subject and even the Dunce of the class complained about him. I almost got a job teaching there.

While at home, I continued using Basic and Visual Basic, and learned SQL for some database manipulation. Hell, I was working on my own D&D offline software systems for Dungeon Masters. I got online and discovered software updates here and there, and libraries that could add to what I could do while I wanted to make an RPG engine. At the same time, another friend and I wanted to write a series of novels and went under the pen name "Totally Deranged". I made a website with the space granted by AOL and began learning basic HTML. So I'm not completely a novice... just out of practice with pure HTML code. But I think I've gotten better at Css over the years.

And then discovered Don Miguel's RPGMaker 2000 site from Russia and the letter from ASCII which granted him permission to translate RPGMaker 2000 into English. Hey, it wasn't until 2001 that ASCII had to make a debt deal and 2002 for a merger. The 2000 letter mighta been genuine. After the merger "All Rights Reserved" would have kicked in regardless.

Oh, I did some eventing back then.... and looked to other means to make an RPG engine regardless as the whole incident with Enterbrain and the 'illegal translations' scenario. And you had to literally purchase the Japanese licensed version of RPGMaker 2003 if you wanted to legally use the RPG Advocate translation of the system. I know a couple in the community that did.

But I literally waited until RPGMaker XP came out before I began coding in RUBY. That was in 2004-2005 with RMXP.net and Creation Asylum where I met Trickster, Derk Jan (yep, back then), ccoa, tnsi (You may know him as Cocoa, but under another name that far back) and others.

[MetalRenard]

So I'm now working in IT - I have used some of the JS I learnt and also made a site, automated order system and tons of other stuff for the company that hired me in Osaka. Luckily the boss is super chill and speaks English, I've had plenty of time to learn and progress.

So far I haven't made a complex script from scratch but I'm getting really good at editing and compiling my own from other pieces here and there. Why write it yourself when someone has already done it... right? I know this won't make me an expert but it has helped so far!