#The begining(s)

Summary

Hmm .. where should I start, when did I started coding ? First ...

Body

it was the Pascal

Actually before Pascal it was Basic, on Home Computer, it is true that I was only a kid then, but I got the chance to have a glance at how a software looks like (my father did some small learning programs for me, when I was in elementary school).

After a few lessons in high-school, Pascal (actually Turbo Pascal 7) got my attention; I bought the manuals (programming and Pascal instructions) and got started. I went to some olimpycs competitions but since I didn't really liked school, I prefered to put the programming on second place.

My first big software was in Pascal and of course, it was a Game,

Man, PacMan, unique indeed

Games were always the main reason I kept going on to sticking around a computerand subsequently this is how I learned Pascal: doing a PacMan game, singleplayer, with no AI that eats your character. In fact it was a simple logical - maze game, on 3 level ( I think). The goal was to reach the end of the maze with the fewest moves as possible, and of course eating all the food balls. The movement was made by using the arrow keys, the scores were kept into a text file. The game could also be played in 2 players, but from the same keyboard, alternating turns and the mazes were on the same screen. It had a menu, a loading scene, highscores and around 3000 lines of code (and a windows icon too on the exe ).

Pictures from the game, pretty isn't it ?

More images on Picasa

Other "big" project was my GF's license for the IT degree in highschool. It was a program that did 2 things : first generated a quiz from text files (the questions, 4 possible answers)where you press a key (a-b-c-d) and the program told you which anwer was the right one. The second part was a list of "did you know?" facts list; you could browse trough them by arrows, and all the texts were also read from different files.

All these was back in 99 along other small programs I did indeed, like playing sounds, text encoders and morse code, kind of piano, etc.

A b(y)it of everything

Years passed and I did all sort of things, except coding, until I got to college. Here I had done lots of small projects, in different languanges : FoxPro, C++, Visual C++, firsts HTML and PHP scripts, even IRC clients scripts, telnet, sniffing and all sort of things.

At this point I started to get familiar with various technologies : network protocols (from OSI layers to capturing packets, from shutdown PC's remotely trough telnet to installing different servers ) and programming techniques (procedural and object programming, assembly language, hex and binary systems, general programming methods, error handling, etc).

Of course I learned all of these by myself, not at school, because schools are just for fun ...

I believe that the only book I really learned from was the Visual Basic college manual .

Visual Basic

I liked Visual Basic from the start, and I realised it was exactly what I was looking for, a tool (later I learned on the hard way that is hardly known as a programming language) to make( quick) Windows softwares. Here was my first (and only I think) A (10 grade) at a college exam and my first sold software.

Here are some (bigger then 4 Windows) softwares in Visual Basic 6 (in a random order, and from ~2005-~2007):

A specific tool that was checking (every hour) data from an online XML and put it in an Oracle Database. Keywords are :
- XML read and generate
- .ini Files (read, create, update)
- windows forms, events and error handling
- Oracle transactions and triggers
- timers, basic windows api work and registry (autorun) keys
- HTTP (POST) login
- Error logging in text files (.log)
Mini File Renamer - scans a specific folder, for specific files extensions (or all) and remove their filename. It has 4 options (removes a specific text from their filenames, replaces a text, Smart remove track number from music files, add a counter to the end of a file or add a specific text). With this tool I learned to
- Scan a folder for specific file types
- Rename and delete files
- work with strings
- access windows functions (browse for folder/file)
Cassete renting - the specific school problem, a software that has clients, video cassestes and who rented which and when ..
- Access database
- Display buttons and pictures
- Calculates the penalties, restricts the employee access with a password
NIR (in and out receipts) for a small company. The software keeps and prints reports for the daily and weekly bought and sold goods from a shop.
- Access database
- Printing Reports (receipts, monthly reports, transit papers)
- Handle multiple companies
Very Quick Notes - before the sticky aero and widgets area, was hand made stickies. I still have the text files filled with over 10 pages of passwords, snippets, codes and junks. Basically it was a compact window, with a textbox that creates and works with 2 predefined text files directly in My Documents (for fast normal access).
RememberMe - Now is replaced by Google Calendar and Events; basically it was a small software that could be put in autorun, and at startup would let you know if you have a birthday to celebrate in the next X days. If you completed the year too, it would calculate the age too. It has 2 alerts, in different days, example the first announcement is before 10 days of the birthday and the second one before 2 days.
Other small VB6 projects :
- dinamically modify a Windows menu and minimize to tray
- call different specific API windows functions ( hide desktop icons , work the the CD-ROM tray)
- Calculators for different games (like TheCrimes) and HTML mini editors (before TinyMCE appeared)
- all sort of text tools, dates, calculators
- Clean Folders at startup - manages your startup programs (extra from the windows startup ones) and cleans specific folders at every windows startup (example temporary files folder)
- autocomplete class, register dll's, VB controls skins

To be continued ...Java, C#, Databases and finally PHP

Tags :
programming, software, games, history, pascal, VB6

Entry Info

By .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) • Tagged #Portofolio • Written June 04 2011 • So far it has 213 views and 0 Comments • Permalink •