Skip to main content

The Woes of A First -Time Programmer


Most of us  have, at some point of our lives, done a little programming. And that means most of us have at some point been beginners at it. And that means we have successfully survived a living nightmare without losing our minds. Congratulations.

Shall I recount my own experiences?

First, I had to install  a compiler on my system. After spending fifteen minutes installing one that was recommended to me, I realized that  the environment was completely different from the one I used at school. After struggling a little with with DOS ( about which I knew next to nothing) by typing commands whose meanings I did not know, I managed to type a simple program. Then came the moment of truth...compilation.

 It didn't go smoothly.There was a huge list of errors (or so it seemed). You probably know how intimidating the command prompt window looks to someone who's always used  GUI. After trying in vain to correct the errors, I gave up on that compiler and decided to download the one we had at school. After downloading the whole thing ( which took another fifteen minutes) the software had the audacity to tell me it was not compatible with my system! I could have screamed. What was the bold text on the website saying
'FOR WINDOWS 7' supposed to mean, huh? I had had enough. I gave it up for the day.

Two days later, when my disgust had somewhat lessened (and my submission date come a little closer), I downloaded another compiler successfully on the second try...only to see it crash when I tried to use it.
In despair, I went to my father, who made me a little more comfortable with the first compiler. Finally, I had begun the task of actually writing the program.

Then came the second most annoying thing. Parse errors.  I forget a semicolon, and the compiler shows a huge list of errors that makes me think I'm  a failure. However, here I must note that there were  few things more satisfying than watching that list disappear when I put that semicolon where it belonged.

After a lot of debugging and rewriting and recompiling with bated breath , my code was done. That's when I remembered that I would have to try it on the compiler we used at school. My spirits deflated faster than a helium balloon with a hole in it. Something was bound to go wrong.

My intuition didn't disappoint me. Header files had to be changed, and the corresponding functions had to be altered and an error that had somehow not shown up previously began to plague me. Eventually, most of that was sorted out too.

If you're new to this as well, don't let it scare you. Once you get used to writing the code, you can focus on the logic behind your program, and that bit is actually fun.

As a conclusion, here are some tips from a veteran 'first timer' (if that makes any sense):
 
 Tip 1. Get someone to teach you how to format your code properly. It becomes so much easier to debug.
 (thanks dad!).
Tip 2. Learn how to use your editor properly before struggling with it when you have to. Quite often, there's an easy shortcut that you just don't know about.
Tip 3: Don't be intimidated by long lists of errors that seem to be written in gibberish. Take a deep breath and look for the line number and  words that you recognize. Often, a small error makes a lot of things go wrong.
Tip 4: Don't program if you're sleepy or tired. It's twice as frustrating.

Happy programming!
Now let me go deal with that function that simply won't work...
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts from lonely days

Some nights before I started to write this in mid-2022, I dreamt that I was in an aircraft that was plummeting to the earth. I was not surprised by this dream - less than a week had passed since a tragic plane crash in China. What did surprise me was that I had continued to hope that the plane would right itself until the very end. So when I woke up, breathing hard, still alive, what upset me the most about my nightmare was not that the plane had crashed, but that I had not made peace with my death in those final moments.  I've spent a lot of time thinking about death in the last two years; many of us probably did as we anxiously watched counters on dashboards, each uptick marking the end of another human life. On nights when my overactive imagination conjured up terrible scenarios, I protected myself by taking a mental step back and reminding myself that death was inevitable. But creating distance made me feel guilty. Was it not wrong to feel anything less than all the sadness I...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hot Potato

 _ ____ is like a hot potato  I don't want to hold it  It's too big to throw away ____ is  like a hot potato  I hold on to it  So you don't have to  ____ is like a hot potato  Watching you hold it Still hurts somehow ____ is like a hot potato  I throw it at whoever's around When I can't hold it any longer ____ is like a hot potato  It will cool in time If ____ really is like a hot potato  Maybe we should pass it around  So when it cools,  Our hands are reddened,  but still whole  And we could make a salad  - Ananya  10th December 2024
Post a Comment
Read more

On Bangles and Car keys:

We remember and register the strangest things. Lots of  Indian women who drive wear bangles and own a set of car keys. When I was younger and anxiously awaiting my mother’s return from wherever she’d gone- the sound of those bangles and keys was what I would listen for.When I heard the sound of her fumbling for the keys, I would rush to the door to greet her ( as I grew older I would do the opposite- turn the TV off or shut the novel I was reading and run in). But whatever the response was to the keys and bangles, I would always know they were my mother’s.  I may hear other keys and bangles, but somehow, they always sound different. To this day, that sound means ‘mum’s home’ and thus, even today, I cherish it.
1 comment
Read more