How did people back then learn how to program...

how did people back then learn how to program? they didnt have handholding stepping stone languages like python or javascript

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Go to school. Read a book.

Have you heard of books? Like, physical ones on dead trees? Yes, those. That's how.

Books + practice.

They did. BASIC is what people started on before C. BASIC goes back to the 60s. Before that there weren't many programmers, but those there were were phds in maths or electrical engineering already.

it was easier because you didn't have to understand complicated shit, just peek and poke ur memory and hardware registers, documentation laid out transparently, etc

the bar used to be a lot lower than it is now, if you had any knowledge at all you were a god

BASIC and COBOL are pretty similar to Python and JavaScript to be quite honest.

Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

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Listen to an interview with any old school programmer. Almost all of them tell a similar story.

>I got a programming magazine with code to make a game. I hand copied it from the magazine and then started fucking around with it

the bar for everything used to be lower. all the boomers at my office couldn't get hired again if they had to start out fresh today.

This

Back when no one knew how to program, they expected you to learn on the job. They would just hire engineering, math and physics grads and hope they can figure shit out on the fly.

just learn with c

Early programs were all simple as fuck.
A few dozen pages at most, all easy to understand.

Dude now its it way simpler.

I remembered windows in c++ back in 96/97.

You had to program the back buffer and front buffer with gazzilion of cryptic lib functions.

Now
>Drag and drop
>Bind function/method

You couldn't be a brainlet back then if you want to learn how to program.

Try fail.
Try fail.
Try fail.
Now it works.

Ad infinitum.

They snuck into MIT after hours and just hacked on computers trying to make them do anything interesting. Then shared the knowledge withing the communities.
They thought computers were cool so any non-retarded people with enough time and interest will eventually create cool shit. Unless you are black then you will just eat dirt steal shit and carve wooden penises.

your talking about windows
commodore a piece of cake

They did. They were called basic and pascal.
Sure, still not as nice as the modern easy mode languages, but back then, the programs were much simpler, too.

Books, BASIC, and the fact that 70s-80s computers came with BASIC out of the box

dilate

>back then
Huh? I was learning C++ by reading Bjarne Stroustrup beginner book. It was pretty confusing in the beginning because the first chapter was already programming a full blown calculator who was able to interpret variables and shit.

Retarded languages like P*thon didn't exist back then so you could actually learn a real language.

Thats a bad book it just goes over the basics quick but with no real functionality.

lol wut? i'm a lazy pythonfag that doesn't know how to either integrate or differentiate and i failed probability and combinatorics exam and still got a decent paying job. you're just lazy faggots.

By gitting gud.

Back then it was more like this early-mid 90s.
Not lying here.

>Hey kid can you turn on a computer?
>Umm ...y-yea?

>You hired!
>Here a book of Pascal get to work tomorrow

An they where throwing money left and right during the .com boom

1. accept futility
2. Draw satanic circle
3. Summon satan and sell off your youth for COBOL programming skills
Idk about other languages.

Nah, it was pretty good. It had exercises in the end. It just had an unnecessary gui programming chapter in the end. I think it was fltk.

Just pick up a logic gate and stare at it. Then a few years later you are programming space invaders on the arcade machine you invented. At least thats how it is for people with three digit IQ.

I mean you only need the NAND gate really

sopa de macaco

Look at the code base of any mainstream operating system and tell me those people knew how to program. They learned programming in college and their knowledge pretty much platoed there, and there was no SO to help them.

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For modern code horror look what scientists write.

é essa peca que voce queria? **agarra**

This. The C64 came with a BASIC book

Complete lies. Pic related

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Tell me about it. I once sat next to an Italian Physicist on a flight back from Tokyo. He told me he teaches C++ to Physics undergrads in a 20 hour course. First lesson: Binary, Hexadecimal and Ascii. Second lesson: pointer arithmatic.

Talk about a trial by fire

Yes, unlearning ascii is the biggest trial

They learned how shit actually worked. No abstractions, no cargo cult code copying, no magical thinking. Just you, your program, a debugger if applicable, and a machine. Also, the debugger is of less assistance when you don't have protected memory and the machine crashes if you do certain naughty things.