From: Tim Hunter <TimHunter@...>
Date: 2008-03-25T09:34:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Beginner's question

Peter Johnsson wrote:
> Haha! finally. After a plentyful of hours I have at last finished a 
> working code. Completely inept and lacking of grace, I know, but still! 
> At last it is finished.

Congratulations! I know how good this feeling is.

I wrote my first program in 1979. It was a dozen lines of FORTRAN that 
computed the roots of a quadratic equation. I typed the code into a 
machine that produced punched cards, fed the cards into the hopper of a 
punch card reader, and then waited beside a line printer the size of a 
commericial washing machine. Some time between a few minutes and a few 
hours later the output appeared, printed on a giant sheet of continuous 
fold paper patterned with alternating light and dark green lines. I took 
the paper home with me and spent more time than I'd care to admit just 
looking at it.

That was 29 years ago and I've never looked back. I hope the hours you 
spend programming are as rewarding as mine have been.