Episode 13: Bart and Pete Ramble About Programming

This episode we talk about a programming project Bart used to dip his toes back into the pond of programming and see if he enjoys it.

Direct Download: http://traffic.libsyn.com/geekingafterdark/Geeking_After_Dark_13.mp3 

Show notes:

•  What should Pete and Norma argue about?
• Blue Snowball...do I sound better?
• Bart worked on a personal project ending on New Year's
• Are programmers intolerant of new programmers?
• Pete doesn't think that's a problem at the company
• There's a bias against certain languages
• Seems strange since .NET compiles down to CIL anyway
• Use the "right" language for the job
• Bart talks about his limited programming background
• Bart relives his capstone of PERL and VB
• If you have a need, that's a motivating factor to learn to program
• The fundamentals of programming can get boring
• Specs are a good idea, or at least thinking ahead about the program
• Visual Studio is intimidating
• Some things aren't intuitive (async timer, I'm looking at you...)
• MS's tools are great for programmers, but overwhelming
• How do you debug?
• There's a lot of magic that abstracts implementation from execution
• Experience gives you a larger body of questions to ask and figure out how your program fails
• Are there materials on how to debug programs?
• Can you get stuck learning a particular tool?
• We might end up doing a multi-part discussion on learning to program
• Pete was looking at coming up with a curriculum for teaching a family member how to program and work in IT