ZZüy – A Lesson In Perseverance | Hacker News Reader

ZZüy – A Lesson In Perseverance

martinrue.com

29 pointsmartinrue7 comments

I'm always impressed by people who programmed before the answers to programming questions were so easy to find (basically before stackoverflow :).

Back then, it was code, the streets, or the pit. That is, if you didn't get eaten by a bear. You quickly learned to fix your problems yourself, because you had to.

As much as you must have hated Jason for what he did, that guy has a great sense of humor.

As long as nobody ever does something like that to me.

It should have been "ZZüy – A Lesson In Language Choice". If he had stuck with BASIC, he would not have had to endure the tortured route to success that was necessary with C.

If he had stuck with BASIC, he might not have had the protocols he needed to write what he wanted.

"If he had stuck with BASIC, he might not have had the protocols he needed to write what he wanted."

Perhaps, but today, you can likely call out to the shell for anything which your language doesn't provide. Need a webpage? Use cURL. That's what I will do, if I decide to use this new language that I recently discovered.

http://agena.sourceforge.net

"C was nothing like BASIC. It was far more exciting and looked much cooler with all its obscure syntax and low level semantics."

His "About Me" says that he loves simplicity, yet his choice of language seems to have been due solely to being seduced by flash. A tremendous amount of bad code has resulted from decisions made in such an impetuous and shallow manner.

Just to add some context: the fascination I describe with C is from the perspective of a 15 year old learning to write his first real tool.

And, in fact, I knew nothing else at the time. What I essentially describe in the post is a learning process – not the events of a professional developer making a reasond choice of the best language to use for a particular problem.

Simplicity is something I've come to appreciate exactly because of such experiences early in my career.

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