Introduction

Learn to Program, Third Edition — by Chris Pine (5 / 116)

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I vividly remember writing my first program. (My memory is pretty horrible; I don’t vividly remember many things, only things like waking up after oral surgery, watching the birth of my children, or writing my first program…you know, things like that.)

I suppose, looking back, that it was a fairly ambitious program for a newbie, maybe twenty or thirty lines of code. But I was a math major, after all, and we’re supposed to be good at things like “logical thinking.” So, I went down to the Reed College computer lab, armed only with a book on programming and my ego, sat down at one of the Unix terminals there, and started programming. Well, maybe “started” isn’t the right word. Or “programming.” I mostly just sat there, feeling hopelessly stupid. Then ashamed. Then angry. Then small. Eight grueling hours later, the program was finished. It worked, but I didn’t much care at that point. It wasn’t a triumphant moment for me.

It has been more than two decades, but I can still feel the stress and humiliation in my stomach when I think about it.

Clearly, this was not the way to learn programming.

Why was it so hard? I mean, there I was, this reasonably bright guy with some fairly rigorous mathematical training — you’d think I’d be able to get this! And I did go on to make a living programming and even to write a…