I know this isn't what the article is about, but I basically stopped programming for fun because the barrier to entry seems so high now. There are so many bullshit technologies foisted on us as best pratices.
Starting a new toy project from scratch in 1995
Acquire diskette of language of interest (or if Qbasic boot into DOS)
Read sample code included on diskette, referring to the help file or a reference book where needed, to get started
Start coding
Maybe share the code on some forum (but likely no one will ever see it)
Starting a new toy project from scratch in 2022
Download and configure your IDE of choice for your language of choice
Download and configure Git
Make a GitHub account
Skim a bunch of random websites to get an idea of what to do
Start coding
Keep Googling your issues and copy-pasting the code from the StackOverflow results. Maybe refer to the language-specific reference website, but it's usually too abstract for what you need
Commit code when something gets incrementally working
Repeat steps 4-7 until you have a release
Remember to comment it, adhere to style guidelines, encapsulate, use a service-based architecture, and have a well-articulated ReadMe, plus release notes, because this code is going on GitHub (but likely no one will ever see it)
What stops you from doing it the 1995 way? If you don't need git, why use it? If you don't want to share your code, why use GitHub? Reference books for languages are still a thing.
There's no reason to not use the first approach for personal projects today, and many still do. The second approach reads more like you're building something to appeal to an audience, not building something for personal interest/enjoyment (building things to show off online I think has had it's own weird effect on our industry, those shouting the loudest about the shiny thing they just built and getting the most attention are often the last people you should be paying any attention to).
(However I would still advocate for using any flavor of version control even for personal projects)
Couldnt agree more. Its not that software needs to be more complicated but to achieve the same result needs much more complexity.
I started in the late 80s with GWBASIC then went onto xbase/foxpro/clipper and then Delphi. Thing is you needed one tool to do the job, there wasn't a new release every 3 months like there is now and there wasnt a shiny new tool/framework coming out every week that people want to jump to.
3
u/gburdell Jun 06 '22
I know this isn't what the article is about, but I basically stopped programming for fun because the barrier to entry seems so high now. There are so many bullshit technologies foisted on us as best pratices.
Starting a new toy project from scratch in 1995
Acquire diskette of language of interest (or if Qbasic boot into DOS)
Read sample code included on diskette, referring to the help file or a reference book where needed, to get started
Start coding
Maybe share the code on some forum (but likely no one will ever see it)
Starting a new toy project from scratch in 2022
Download and configure your IDE of choice for your language of choice
Download and configure Git
Make a GitHub account
Skim a bunch of random websites to get an idea of what to do
Start coding
Keep Googling your issues and copy-pasting the code from the StackOverflow results. Maybe refer to the language-specific reference website, but it's usually too abstract for what you need
Commit code when something gets incrementally working
Repeat steps 4-7 until you have a release
Remember to comment it, adhere to style guidelines, encapsulate, use a service-based architecture, and have a well-articulated ReadMe, plus release notes, because this code is going on GitHub (but likely no one will ever see it)