Today at the stealers, part X

[Kevin Bacon 5]

I used to be REALLY into computers right up to 1998 when I got a job in computing.... Now I work as a developer/consultant/scapegoat and would do virtually ANY other job that paid the same. SO miserable and bored in IT these days, want to train as an electrician...

 

Agreed. Computing is boring these days. Gone are the days where you had to configure everthing manually in Windoze 3.1 and NT 3 for workgroups etc...... all you do now is slap XP on a box and that's it, done....

 

Networking used to be what interested me but even that is plug and play these days......

 

Programming....Yawn....

 

Yep, I want to train to be something else aswell...but not sure what yet!

[Jim 2]

I always wanted to train and be a mechanic.. basically I know nothing about car repairs so would have to start from the very bottom. Problem is IT pays just too well and I don't want to drop my pay and start at the bottom of the ladder again :(

[theRuler 0]

Ok ok and who else typed programs out of mags and then they told you the misprints a week later ?

 

chubbz

 

or you are typing in a giant hex listing, and a section of the code is poorly printed / illegable . . . .

 

poke 35899,0 was for infinate lives in jetset willy

 

6031769 was the "boot code" for manic miner (the early bug byte release)

 

roots, i tell ya

[swfblade 0]

golddust, I always go to Wayside parts m8, i never bother with the actual main dealer in MK. The only main dealer round here i trust round here is Keiths in Aylesbury and thats only coz I know peeps who work there!

[dinkus 10]

:lol: I love how this has turned into a IT self help group when it started off about a trip to the stealers :lol:

 

But as we're here...

 

My dad used to work for Acorn, so I had a BBC Micro B from about 4. I got bored with just playing the (occasionally very good, but usually utter pants) games I had on there, so I started tinkering in BASIC. It's gone from there and now I end up writing bastid complicated websites that do this that and the other with databases. I've yet to have a single day of training or a qualification, but as I picked it up as I go and am just a bit of a control freak, the code seems to be pretty tidy (if a little messy around deadline time...).

 

I think it certainly helps if you've had experience using a command line, as you *have* to write code to get it to do anything. You can then play around with very simple stuff that teaches you the thought processes you need to program properly. I don't think that DOS is essential though, you can start programming in PHP with little to no experience. The language is nice and simple and extremely well documented, but if you know what you're doing you can get it to do some very clever stuff.

 

I must say that although networking does interest me, I get more satisfaction from getting a computer to do what I want in a way that is stupendously easy for other people to use as well. I'm not sure why that is though. I guess it's just a case of using computers to make your life easier. There's no point in a computer doing something for you if it takes you 6 weeks to work out how to use it.

 

[/soapbox]

[h100vw 0]

 

Ok ok and who else typed programs out of mags and then they told you the misprints a week later ?

 

chubbz

 

The basts, I did the one that went back and forth across your telly and you had to drop the thingy onto a base at the bottom.

 

I had loads of Sinclair User mags sad loser :roll:

 

I went to tech to do Computer studies in 1984, the BBC B ruled there. Imagine 20 excited faces when we came in one monday to find 5 1/4 drives hooked up and no tape players! :lol:

 

It made loading the games so much quicker........... Asteroids rocked.

 

10 x=x+1

20 go to 10

is about all I remember.

 

Unbelieveably I still us small amounts of DOS on our In Flight video systems. Mainly to set the date and time, just cos I can. The new blokes can never remember how to. So I let them use windows instead. :twisted:

 

 

The 80s, halcyon days, jumpers for goalposts etc etc.

 

Gavin

[theRuler 0]

i still use dos in xp (well xp's dos)

for ipconfig etc.

 

and at work with writing java classes, there is a dos element.

 

i genuinely enjoy programming though, have done for 20 years +

 

i left school in 1989, aged 16, failed all me exams.

i get paid more than the teachers that told me i'd never amount to shit now.

[h100vw 0]

i

i get paid more than the teachers that told me i'd never amount to s*** now.

 

I get paid more than the one that questioned me quitting sixth form for Tech.

 

If they had their way, we'd all be sat in grey offices and never see the sun. Working 40/40. 40 hours a week for 40 years and trying to survive on less money in retirement than we couldn't live on when we were working.... :roll:

 

Gavin

[chubbybrown 0]

what a great thread !

 

I should have stuck in with the pooters many of the boys are techs in big places,but I kept it as a hobby and This week Im home with the FLu

this wireless stuff is great usually when you dont follow the instructions !

 

 

Oh anyone play Hunchback ?

[Henny 0]

Frak! Now there was a game! And I still don't think there's been a game to rival the BBC B's version of Elite... 8)

 

I'm an Ex-BBC B programmer too... until I got banned from the school computer room for alledgedly breaking into the Headmaster's user account and taking away all of the privaledges from the teacher so he couldn't do anything... They never proved anything though... ;) :lol:

 

I did quite a bit of C programming at University, but couldn't have done it for a living as I'd have gone mad (ok, more mad than I already have gone )

 

I'm quite happy with my career in Radio... I get to play with some cool toys, work with some cool (and sometimes famous) people in a nice relaxed environment and still get my hands on the IT kit at times when needed... 8)

[theRuler 0]

"grandmaster frak and the furious five"

i remember frak. and his yo-yo

 

hunchback

oh my that was an annoying game.

[Kevin Bacon 5]

I've got a Dragon 32 in the loft somewhere, and a ZX81 that's never been used....plug never attached to mains lead! Still in original box complete with geek boy on the front :) Might be worth something someday!

 

Favourite games from that era were:-

 

Shock Trooper

Hungry Horace

Horace goes skiing

Jet set willy

[theRuler 0]

what about "ah diddums" ? lol

 

 

aticatac was dope

 

 

or everyone's favourite

 

[chrishill 0]

I got banned from the school computer room for alledgedly breaking into the Headmaster's user account

 

same here henny - well simular at least... according to a letter I still have from my old headmaster, i 'hacked' the computers on two seperate occasions, once by guessing the librarians password which let me play pool on the old powermac's in the library and once by finding a floppy disc and running an interesting looking .exe off it. hardly matters of national security but i got all my computer privilidges taken off me :( they should have been encoraging my tallents!

[coolrado 0]

I've got a Dragon 32 in the loft somewhere, and a ZX81 that's never been used....plug never attached to mains lead! Still in original box complete with geek boy on the front :) Might be worth something someday!

 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 97701&rd=1

 

they allready are worth something i have seen zx81's sell for nearly £200 on e-bay in the past

[golddust 0]

I used to let myself into the teacher accounts on the Novell account system then draw naughty pictures of them and save them there! :norty:

When the IT teacher began asking who did it I could barely keep a straight face...

[Henny 0]

when the headmaster writes his passwords down and then leaves them in the computer room, it's just asking to be taken advantage of... I still protest my innocence though... someone else beat me to it... :roll: :lol:

[Tempest 0]

Ah, the Speccy, yes, now funny that, as on the German Sciroccoforum, where I regularly hang out on (several times a day actually :lol: ) we're having a similar discussion, and longing back to the 80s when men were still men hacking away insanely long hex or Basic listings just to get some crappy game to run (that's after you'd debugged it, or simply waited one month till the next issue of Sinclair User or whatever told you where the mistake was :lol:).

 

During my uni days I did quite a lot of Pascal and C, loved it, and got a kick out of every program that worked. Then Windows came along, and yes, that was great for tinkering, OS/2 was even better, Linux was much better, but these days it's all too bloody user-friendly, any stupid housedog can get a client-server network up and running ... :mad: Not on, as that's where I wanted to make money with all those skilled carefully acquired mainly through self-interest and teaching over the years.

 

Oh well, can always drop back on my real roots, degree in electrical engineering, if it weren't for the Chinese being cheaper to make, erm, sorry, copy, eletronic devices and flog them in the EU :oops: .

 

Nope, I don't want to become a car mechanic, as that could potentially ruin another perfect hobby, like I almost did with my computer hobby (running your own company places an enormous strain on what otherwise was your favourite hobby).

 

Enough rant from me :lol:

 

Tempest

[golddust 0]

During my uni days I did quite a lot of Pascal and C, loved it

 

During my uni days I did quite a lot of Cider and E, loved it

[bristolbaron 10]

During my uni days I did quite a lot of Pascal and C, loved it

 

During my uni days I did quite a lot of Cider and E, loved it

 

:lol: :lol: :lol:

[chubbybrown 0]

Henny I did that,

just trying to remember how I did it wasnt it just the case of removing the ,s after thier system name or was it ,e

god so long ago as Im 36 now

it gave the head of maths a bit of a bum rush the kids were zooming past him :-)

[GIXXERUK 0]

most of the guys in parts have some tasty mk2 golfs at the my local stealership and they often come out to look at my c , they all dislike all the newer vee dubs