Not A Real Programmer Anymore
I started programming in middle school with the now defunct language called BlitzPlus. I have only the fuzziest ideas as to how I discovered the language. I remember watching YouTube tutorials for it, but I'm not sure what platform I discovered it on.
I remember being really impressed with video games, and I had the dream of making my own someday. I did some tentative exploration with a program called Game Maker. But it didn't feel like what I was after. I thought "Well who made this program? Where do programs come from?".
I think I probably looked up "programming language video games" and landed on BlitzPlus somehow. It was good for what it was, I can't remember the syntax, but it taught me the basics of programming like variables, functions, and loops. I have vague memories of hitting a little rocket (or maybe it was a spaceship?) to compile my code, and I was amazed whenever it did.
In high school I thought I hit the big leagues when I discovered what C++ was. I remember asking my dad for pocket money to pick up a copy of Sams Teach Yourself C++ In 24 Hours. I read that book cover to cover several times over the years1.
The upgrade from BlitzPlus to C++ made me feel invincible. I remember using an IDE that came in a CD with the book and I'm pretty sure the company that made that IDE doesn't exist anymore. I learned a lot about pointers, classes, inheritance, encapsulation, the whole OOP design philosophy2.
I felt like I had a whole new tool belt worth of knowledge, so I looked up some graphics programming libraries to see what I could cobble together. I remember trying SDL and thinking "Jesus Christ hell nah" before trying something out called Allegro because it seemed easier.
I don't know if I ever did anything substantial with it aside from tiny demos. But I was having fun and learning so that's what mattered.
The years passed and passed, C++ kept evolving. I think I stopped caring around C++14/17. The syntax, at least to me, just seemed to be getting uglier. Header files, makefiles and porting libraries was starting to get old. So in the first time since moving from BlitzPlus to C++, I went on a journey of cybernetic rediscovery.
Did some programming in Python, Java, and C3. Every time i spent a couple months in those languages, I thought I'd found my "home". A language perfect for me, a language I'd be the most productive in.
Until the honeymoon phase ended and I started checking out other programming languages. After awhile I came to the conclusion that they all kind of just suck. All in their unique ways, they all had something that made me frown or drove me insane.
Growing up, I was a real snot about C++. I had a "low level only bro" and "garbage collected languages are lame" smug evangelism that I inherited from forums and IRC. These days I just sort of shrug, and, in defiance to a younger misguided me, proudly proclaim that I'm not a real programmer anymore and mostly use the one the few languages that made me feel the least annoyed: Python
My younger self would be fuming at the mouth in rage and I love it for that fact.
Python is a wonderful language. GUIs? Pyside. Backend web dev? Flask/FastAPI. If there's it's something too slow to do natively, guaranteed there's someone who came along and wrote a python library in C/++ or Rust to help speed up whatever it is you're trying to accomplish.
These days if I'm doing any sort of coding, it's all Python, Java4, HTML and the odd bit of inline JavaScript. It's funny, because the one habit I wasn't able to break out of with C++ is static types. I feel compelled to type hint everywhere in my python code. I don't know how pythonic this is, but there's something about leaving variable declarations ambiguous that feels almost taboo.
Overall, I'm comfy with my programming journey. It's been a good hobby for the majority of my life and I wouldn't change a thing.
Mail reply
I regret not keeping it. When I was moving one year I sold the majority of my books to a used bookstore. My copy of it was in the pile I boxed up. It was C++98, so probably a little outdated by today's standards, but it had sentimental value.↩
A philosophy I'd avoid and use sparingly later on in my life. But it was good to learn different design patterns.↩
I think I wanted to see if it was just C++ without all the stuff that annoyed me, but I just got more of it.↩
I have a libgdx game engine I was working that I can't seem to get rid of. I spent a week working with different ways to manipulate fonts until I had a "wtf am I doing with my life" moment and haven't touched it since.↩