Xeon's milestones

[Xeon]

Hi all,

This thread is basically a mini blog to commemorate my long existence in CodeGuru. This way, I don't need to waste time to sign up for some blogging account. This way, CodeGuru can help me to suck up all the bandwidth and I don't need to pay a single cent.

Anyway, here the story goes.....

1984 : Born.

1985 - 1990 : A total crybaby. Keep crying almost every minute that my mom almost went mad and broke down. Parents sent me to doctors to see if there's something wrong with me. Got better during 1988 - 1990.
Got into pre-school in 1988. Got bullied almost everyday by very mean girls. They drew on my textbooks and tore it. I cried. They got even happier and abuse my books even further. Some pinch me. Mom asked me when I got home, about why my books are so messy and torn. I said I did it myself. I cried inside.
Those childhood incidents left a deep scar in me till now. Whenever I read or see on TV about parents/caretakers physically abusing their kids(like waking them up in the middle of the night and whipping them for no reason), I swear I wanna kill these dogs in the most cruel way possible.
I can tolerate everything, from racists to terrorists to murderers, but not child abusers.

1991 - 1993 : Enter my 1st year in school(7 years old then). Fought and argued with my group leader frequently until both our parents and everybody's parents(those who were involved) got called up and the whole matter was blown big. Did some fighting and sabotaging(cutting up others' artwork and drawings )
Faked my report card by creating one of my own. Mom believed it and bought me a Ninja-Turtle toy to reward my "high grades". Teacher called later and told her. She got upset. I really let her down. I deserve to die a thousand times.
Parents got called up every year from 1991 - 1993.

1994 : Started to fall in my studies. Never hand in homework and tried to act busy/flustered so that the teacher won't notice whenever I forget to bring my textbooks. Got caught several times for playing other "cheat-the-teacher" tricks. Dad got called up.

1995 : Met monstrous teacher who would flung dusters, chalks and textbooks into my face. Always use the duster and her own finger-bones to knock my head. Very painful sometimes and tears came into my eyes.
Later in the year, got caught in a misunderstanding where a teacher accused me of cheating in my exams.
Actually, I was just leaning next to my pal looking at his pencil case, since it's a beautiful landscape and artistic design.
Got sent to the principal's office for caning, but the kind old man gave me a chance. Maybe he saw Jesus behind me and knew that I was really being wronged. Parents got called up at the end of the year.

1996 : Met another fiery-tempered teacher. Almost same as the previous one, but not so bad. Whenever I didn't tidy my files, she would flung my books across the classroom and let everyone see. Keeps pinching and twisting my ears. Female teachers are demons. When they flare up, the 666 in them is awaken. Parents got called up 2 times.

1997 - 1998 : Passed my final grade school national exam and got into an average high school. An average student. Started to take attention in sex and girls. I was 13 years old in 1997. Parents got called up both years.

1999 - 2000 : Skipped classes a lot of times until the headmaster threatened public caning for all to see. Parents never got called up in 1999, but in 2000, they did.
School introduced us to Visual Basic starters course just for fun in late 1999. Was the last in the class and couldn't understand anything. NOOB. But interest was raging like God's fury : I shook uncontrollably and look forward to every class. Started reading about Visual Basic books. Halfway in those books, the author would mention C++. Captured by the unique name, I dropped all Visual Basic stuff and leapt into C++. Forgot all my school studies and learnt programming all the time instead. Parents got mad and pulled the plug off the PC in 2000. But I still read programming books non-stop and programmed whenever I ****ing got the chance.

2001 - 2003 : Got into a vocational school studying Information Technology. Became the class's God whenever it's a programming class. Teachers treated me like God's gift to them(Jesus) and the whole level started to heard of my name. Skipped all other modules(Networking, Computer Maths etc.) except programming classes. Got an expel-warning from the top management, but all teachers spoke good words for me. I was their Jesus.

Mid 2003 - Late 2005 : Entered army. Same old life everyday. Pretty interesting, but pretty scary now that you compare it with the luxuries of civilian life. Never wrote even a half a sentence of code during these years.

Now : Trying to find an entry-level job and slowly progressing from there. Taking up night-classes in Marketing.

This marketing course is making my brains really rusty and stupid with tons of memorizing the facts and issues in the entire textbook. Will get the certificate no matter what, but I don't believe any single thing in these textbooks. They won't work in the real world. But to get the certificate, we gotta do what we don't believe in, every minute of it.

Today, I went to the library and walked among the ranks of the thousands of programming books, from COBOL to C# to PHP to FORTRAN. Then, I remembered those fun days when I did programming.

Two years ago, when I told Sam Hobbs I was never going to touch code again, he brushed it off and said "Believe me, one day you'll come back to programming". However, I remembered those scary nightmares of debugging hours after hours in Visual C++, tracing resource leaks and thinking up of rocket-science code to achieve certain complicated functions in a working program(those not covered in books).
Then I hesistated and withdrew, I feared.

But I made a decision : that programming is fun, and I'm going to do it for a hobby. It helps to break away from the zombie-marketing crap and makes my brain comes alive and stimulate it. It makes my brain hard and erect, full of blood rushing through it.
Maybe one day, when I'm good enough, maybe a decade later when I'm 31 years old......I may turn professional. Or maybe a free-lancer sourcing for projects. Or maybe my own software. Or maybe a teacher teaching programming to newbies in private schools.

In Spiderman 2, Spiderman got his powers back after temporary losing it. When he got them back, he said "I'm back!!!"
I'm back too, and I'm going to program in C++, not Java or C#.
I'm BACK!

This thread is for everyone to post their life story, their plans and their visions too.
And for my Ree pal, here's a close-up and more detailed video to the blonde goddess I was raving about : http://www.norse-myths.com/M-A.mpg

The world laughs with us,
Xeon.

[cilu]

I'm BACK!

class Entity
{
  std::string Name;
public:
  Entity(std::string name): Name(name){}
  std::string GetName() const {return Name;}
};

class God: public Entity
{
  Entity* entity;
public:
  God(std::string name, Entity* ent):Entity(name), entity(ent){}

  void ProtectionPrayer() 
  {
    std::cout << GetName() << " protect us against " << entity->GetName() << std::endl;
  }
}

int main()
{
  Entity loki("xeon");
  God odin("odin", &loki);

  odin.ProtectionPrayer();
}

PS: Xeon should understand the joke...

[NoHero]

I am some kind of scared now... Anyone know why? Because my life story was almost the same except:

• Anything bad (in school) started to happen after basic school
• I hadn't had to go the army yet.
• Of course that I was born 1988

[Ejaz]

I'm BACK!

Welcome back.

I wonder why you went into marketing? Although I believe that you can adjust there as well. When I looked back, I see you as a really good programmer at that time. Anyway, you can still catch up with it. Best of luck

@ NoHero: Does your parents also called the same no. of time as Xeons?

[Platinum Plus]

I'm BACK!

I say

WELCOME BACK![/QUOTE]

[NoHero]

@ NoHero: Does your parents also called the same no. of time as Xeons?

My teachers where to lazy to call (or they are just gathering for...)... All those bad things came up focused to one at the parents' evening...

[Ejaz]

Female teachers are demons.

Well, not all of them, my 6th class teacher was really nice, understanding, caring and kind (err..........ok, I've to admit that, charming too )

[Xeon]

From Cilu:

PS: Xeon should understand the joke...

Hate to say this, Mr. Policeman....but.....here I am, back after such a long rest, and you're throwing namespace std and templates stuff at me?
Back then, I wasn't even sure what namespace std and templates were all about.

From NoHero:

I hadn't had to go the army yet.

I tell you, pal.....you better go read some hot stuff before you go into the army. I dunno if the Austrian army provides you it's soldiers with sex discounts and brothel vouchers as part of it's "Welfare Package", but most armies don't.
U better brace yourself and have a wild bacherlor's night before you enlist.

My teachers where to lazy to call (or they are just gathering for...)... All those bad things came up focused to one at the parents' evening...

Almost the same as mine. The pattern is usually : they call my parents. Fixed an appointment to come down. Then, when my parents went down, the whole class and even school sometimes, is there to watch.

From Ejaz:

I wonder why you went into marketing? Although I believe that you can adjust there as well.

Why I went into marketing? Because before I signed up for the course, I was thinking about how many pretty young girls there were in marketing classes. Of course, I was right : there's lots of young girls in my class, outnumbering the boys by 30% more. There were only a few pretty ones, and whether these girls were pretty or not, they were of utmost disappointing quality and never underwent any quality-control or total-quality-management : 99.9% of them behaved like they're cute little teenie girls aged 13 - 15. I really wanna.......ARGH!!!!! Only one or two behaved like real women. Sigh. I regret.

Worse yet, marketing is very very different from programming. In programming, it's all about craftmanship and "hands-on" stuff. In marketing, all you ever learn is theory and theory. In a way, yes. The theory is useful because it lets you really understand the strategies and promotion dirty tricks all the companies use(even smarter and complicated than the Lord of the Rings movie script), but chances are : these theories are so fine and perfect that they just won't work in the real world.

It's like reading a smooth, everything-works-perfectly fairy tale and then going out to face office politics. I cringe when I see all these thick textbooks on marketing theory. These theory professors should really go out into the field and get their hands dirty, and not sit down at their university room and write blissful marketing fairy tales. Worse still, it's all about memorizing and remembering the facts and examples.
Can you imagine memorizing a textbook of full of buggy code you don't believe in?

When I looked back, I see you as a really good programmer at that time.

Nah, I was a good programmer, only to real beginners. Compared to most guys my level(from NoHero to Sam Hobbs etc.), I was really a sore noob.

Well, not all of them, my 6th class teacher was really nice, understanding, caring and kind (err..........ok, I've to admit that, charming too

Nah! I've seen maybe 1 or 2 of such really pretty young teachers before(good enough to become models).
However, I never had a chance to get taught by them. If I did, maybe my grades would be flying to the skies now.

Anyway, the female teachers I had were all ugly hags. One even had her saliva visibly flying out onto the projector(which was in turn, projected to a big screen) while she was giving lectures. OMFG. :-O

By the way, a question to all you god-made programmers here.
Is it worthwhile to learn C++ at this age? Or is the future turning into the C# direction? I'm back at C++ now, but I'm not sure if this language is going to be replaced by C# soon as the main "C" language(just like the way C++ replaced C in the past).
I hope to get some useful views on this issue, no bias! :-D

Good day!
Xeon.

[Ejaz]

Can you imagine memorizing a textbook of full of buggy code you don't believe in?

Now that pain wrong. Marketing is something, that varies from person to person, place to place and time to time. Furthermore, its a continuous process, you SHOULD have the idea and know the logic behind the theory but memorizing the entire marketing book is a plain wrong thing to do.

Anyway, the female teachers I had were all ugly hags. One even had her saliva visibly flying out onto the projector(which was in turn, projected to a big screen) while she was giving lectures. OMFG. :-O

Eeekkkk....thats digusting. Btw, I wonder where you get this super high appeal for girls. Offcourse, everyone of us like the opposite sex, but your level is waaaaaaaaaaay to much high

Btw, do you remeber your converstaion with a young girl around here, who's father was a hot shot C++/MFC programmer. Its about 3-4 years back, she was I guess around 12 back then and she offered your freelance programming services as well, her name was something like mira..., don't remember it exactly

By the way, a question to all you god-made programmers here.
Is it worthwhile to learn C++ at this age? Or is the future turning into the C# direction? I'm back at C++ now, but I'm not sure if this language is going to be replaced by C# soon as the main "C" language(just like the way C++ replaced C in the past).
I hope to get some useful views on this issue, no bias! :-D

Well, the topic has been raised time to time here. It was same when Java was having its hype. But quite honestly, I don't see C++ off from the face of this planent anytime soon. The place where you need C++, there is no alternative. When asked to Scott Meyers in a recent interview that what is most annoying thing about C++ you find? He said, its complexity. Thats what make people go nutts, if you don't like to get your hands dirty and a quick solution, then there are many RAD tools/languages are out there, but if not, then there is nothing like C++. Once you have the taste of it, you'll never be the same again

[NoHero]

I tell you, pal.....you better go read some hot stuff before you go into the army. I dunno if the Austrian army provides you it's soldiers with sex discounts and brothel vouchers as part of it's "Welfare Package", but most armies don't.
U better brace yourself and have a wild bacherlor's night before you enlist.

Austrian army is not as harsh as your's might be (it's taking 6 months)... All I hear from my elder friends are alcohol partys all the night... ... Anyway, I appreciate your tip...

Almost the same as mine. The pattern is usually : they call my parents. Fixed an appointment to come down. Then, when my parents went down, the whole class and even school sometimes, is there to watch.

Yes of course... and those (silly) folks think they can "help" us by blaming us in front of the entire school/class...

[Siddhartha]

I laughed for so long when I read this...

Anyway, the female teachers I had were all ugly hags. One even had her saliva visibly flying out onto the projector(which was in turn, projected to a big screen) while she was giving lectures. OMFG. :-O

Welcome back, Xeon!

[Siddhartha]

Is it worthwhile to learn C++ at this age? Or is the future turning into the C# direction? I'm back at C++ now, but I'm not sure if this language is going to be replaced by C# soon as the main "C" language (just like the way C++ replaced C in the past).

C# is a .NET language, is Microsoft's creation and will be supported by MS for the years to come.

So will C++ be. However, C++ is not a managed language, is not interpreted, is regulated by the ISO ANSI Standards, and is supported by 1000s of compilers, on 1000s of platforms - Desktop and non-Desktop, both.

C# has a future - true. So does C++.

Note that one cannot write a kernel level driver in C# (!!), and there are fine levels of control over hardware and memory that C++ can give which C# cannot. Having said this - it is easy to write enterprise applications in C#.

C# basically uses .NET namespace objects.
What advantage does this bring to the programmer?

It means that .NET namespace classes like System.String used in C# is exactly the same one used in VB.NET is the same one used in C++.NET and in other .NET languages.

As you can see - the biggest advantage the .NET framework brings with it is the synergy of knowledge (of .NET classes and tools) learnt on one programming platform (like C#) being applicable to other .NET programming platforms as well. Also note that C++ has a .NET avatar in the form of Managed C++.

The biggest advantage of C++ is that it is supported across platforms, is regulated by a standard and one can use it on any (relatively) compliant compiler, on any platform (MS, or non-MS).

So, what’s the net conclusion (pun intended)?
Both are here to stay.

What should a programmer do?

• Learn both if he can.
• Focus on what he needs for the moment.
• Chose the right language after giving the requirement specifications a good thought, and evaluating the expertise at hand.

Good luck!

[logan]

Nice info Sid!!

Hey Xeony since you are back, why not post a pic of yours?

[HanneSThEGreaT]

Welcome back!

[mehdi62b]

Female teachers are demons.

oh in this school I go the ratio is for girls
there are about 29 girls and 11 boys & most of the teachers are women(this is inverse of high school period which girls & boys were seprated,and there were no women teacher)

Anyway, the female teachers I had were all ugly hags. One even had her saliva visibly flying out onto the projector(which was in turn, projected to a big screen) while she was giving lectures. OMFG. :-O

I had a teacher, she sold heroin...