Why Programming

Hello,it is Chandler Klebs again. I was thinking about programming and WHY
I've been doing it. Now the whole boring story of how I became obsessed with
binary isn't the factor. Why was it that I had to write a powers of 2 program?
Even though I had an obsession,there ARE tools. Other people write calculators
that do huge calculations and reach as high as 2^16777216 !
With this in mind,I wonder why I started programming in the first place.
Here's what I came up with.

I had a choice. Rely on other people to do things for me or do it myself!
I was very happy when I finally got the ONLY QBasic program I've ever seen that
actually gets 2^16384. I was doing great. I met a bunch of friends on the QB forum.
Then something really bad happened. I started doing all sorts of things like mad!
I did a little of QBasic,JustBasic,PureBasic,FreeBasic,Pascal,C,and even ASM.
Now while this was a great learning experience,I made a fatal mistake.
All the time I would be posting my programs and explaining what they did.
It helped me learn things from my friends,but after years of this,I realized that when other
people wrote programs,I wasn't too interested in their stuff,besides just running it and seeing
what it did. I even had the source code of somebody else's power of 2 program and yet,there's
only 1 thing I did with it. I ran it and saw what it did. Then I started trying to make a thing
that did it,but with less code. I realized people like making things in their own way.

We programmers are stubborn people who do things our way even if it's harder.
My power of 2 programs ask the user for an exponent. However,doing this requires an input
statement,then you have an extra variable that is read from it and put in the loop.
Also,I had print statements that told them what to do. All this required more code!

I noticed I was wasting my time! I was literally sacrificing efficiency for ease of use.
THAT was my mistake. Programs aren't exactly about ease of use.

There IS a place for teaching and examples. Like that time I helped NEWK with C by writing
him a C prog that did exactly what he wanted. There is a balance about this stuff though.
He was going to use it and study it. There was a time when I "helped" T with her math homework.
Well,I went about it all wrong. I gave away all the answers. People don't learn that way!
There are some things you must tell people and some things you should.

When teaching math,you don't try to get somebody to memorize 1068*1989.
You teach them the lower things like how to add. Then,they eventually won't know the answer,but
they will be able to figure it out on paper!

   555
   777
   1989
 * 1068
-------
  15912
 11934
 0000
1989
-------
2124252

See that? I did it that way. Obviously I put the carries for the multiplication,but when
adding I carried in my head. I used to get in trouble in school because I didn't show all my work
Sometimes I didn't even write that much on the easier problems. They accused me of cheating.
They couldn't prove that I copied somebody else's answers,nor could I prove that I did it.

And so,nothing can be proved. I can't even prove that I'm the author of my power of 2 progs!

Programming is not for everybody,it's something we geeks do.
I don't want to compile my progs just so lazy users can use it. I will share my progs with
my programmer friends that understand them well enough to edit them even if I don't explain it.
I want to surround myself with smart people. The Windows only people are those that can't handle
anything without clicking buttons! QBasic itself is something that even some smart people like
my friend Ben wouldn't use because it's not what he's used to. You won't find him using DOS
programs! So,I appreciate you who have the patience.

Well,I hope something I said made sense. Remember,if you ever need help with powers of 2,I'm here!
chandlerklebs@gmail.com