What was the first serious thing you programmed?

[PartisanEntity]

A slight deviation from this thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=450459) :)

What was the first serious thing you programmed, i.e. not for training or learning purposes but perhaps your first job or first project?

Of course if you have never programmed anything you can just say "Hello" or something like that.

So, Hello :)

[PrimoTurbo]

Nothing serious but I made a black jack game with some friends as a project in visual basic, with a custom made deck, some lame voice overs in the menu. Later on a little maze like game in C++ collecting various items. Both things made a long time ago back in grade 10 and 11.

After that I pretty much forgot everything about programing.

[matthew]

"Hello World!"

Actually, I'm pretty sure it was a narcissistic variation in BASIC, back in about 1981 or so.

10 print "Matthew is cool! "
20 goto 10

[FRuMMaGe]

I made a drawing tool for the Nintendo DS. About 20 pages of c++

[Xzallion]

I started a basic rpg game in java back in high school, and am still working on it. Immagine the NES Legend of Zelda games graphics and overworld movement, mixed with the NES Dragon Warrior battle system. Its odd, but It's fun.

[renzokuken]

im doing my first proper project now. i'm writing an application to control a motorised X-Z positioning stage. oh how i'm loving Visual Basic !

[FRuMMaGe]

im doing my first proper project now. i'm writing an application to control a motorised X-Z positioning stage. oh how i'm loving Visual Basic !

I don't like visual basic. I feel that it does too much for it's self and doesn't really require as much effort from the programmer. Some people like this, but I like to feel more in control :p

[renzokuken]

sadly i dont have a choice really. i dont have ANY prior knowledge of programming so i'm finding the whole WYSIWYG aspect a great aide. i'm having to do this as part of my PhD.

[DoctorMO]

I once created a whole menu system for DOS/MagicDesk/Win3.11 I was about 8 so it was in BASIC, Batch and various scriptings; I even drew lots of little icons for all my dos games in MagicDesk. oh hardy times.

For work? It would have to be an embedded fire system communications module to convert LonWorks to a proprietory serial protocol and vs/vr

[FRuMMaGe]

I once created a whole menu system for DOS/MagicDesk/Win3.11 I was about 8 so it was in BASIC, Batch and various scriptings; I even drew lots of little icons for all my dos games in MagicDesk. oh hardy times.

For work? It would have to be an embedded fire system communications module to convert LonWorks to a proprietory serial protocol and vs/vr

lol batch is great. It's probably the easiest programming language ever!

I made a batch file to screw with the school network and remote admin the teacher's computers, deleting the logs it made aswell.

Pity it's generally only for winblows

[Bavo]

I don't like visual basic. I feel that it does too much for it's self and doesn't really require as much effort from the programmer. Some people like this, but I like to feel more in control :p

At school we used to call VB 'Advanced Paint'.
They wanted us to program PIC's using VB, but we thought that that was to easy and did it in assembler :)

On topic: the biggest thing I've programmed would be a project in php for school I guess. For the rest I've only programmed small mostly useless things.

[cunawarit]

First thing I got paid to program was a computer booking system for my University. I wrote it in Turbo Pascal.

Before that it was all school, and learning stuff... Of notable mention:

* An origami tutorial, written in Basic for the Acorn Archimedes. Smoothly animated graphics with pseudo 3D, it was great!

* Text pong, written in Pascal for DOS.

* An animated underwater scene, written in Pascal, it used both sprites and native shapes. I also alternated between two screens so I never had to update the screen being viewed resulting in much smoother animation.

* A number of small numerical method programs for my Casio fx-7700GE.

[bchaffin72]

The Apple IIe with a BASIC interpreter, mostly learning the graphics modes. Almost managed a crude video game.

[MoxJet]

One of the first things I can recall having programmed is something like this in QBasic

FOR i = 1 TO 15
COLOR i
PRINT i
NEXT i

^_^

[Spr0k3t]

My first real project was converting a COBOL base structure from a BBS to a web business presence. The system control level has a secondary tool built to communicate directly with the database in Java for n-teir operations. It wasn't a small project, and took months of development. The business practicum incorporates PDF invoices and point tracking. I was also able to build a month end batch printing system in case the customers did not want their invoices emailed. It was all built from scratch. (kcbig.net)

The unfortunate part of that site, it hasn't really moved past it's roots since the creation. That, and the fact the owner insisted I used VB to code everything.

Oh yeah, my very first major project that I never got paid for... Yachatzee, you could play yatzee with a friend over a modem connection. That was shortly after I got my brand spankin new 150baud modem though.

[argie]

The first thing I programmed was in Logo when I was in 3rd grade ( 7 years old ). I forget the syntax though, FD 40, RT 90, FD 40, RT 90, FD 40, RT 90, FD 40. Ta-dah! Square! Then concentric circles. The first serious thing I programmed was actually just some partly useful hack to someone else's code that my dad was using. It was in Java and and was about matching nail sizes to femurs.

[skwishybug]

My first real program was part of a class project that included that the best implementation would be used in the lab. It was a resource allocation and tracking system programmed using FoxPro.

[Lux Perpetua]

The first (and only) thing that most other people can relate to is a portal site for my undergraduate university made with two other people using PHP as a project in my "advanced programming" course. The site is still up! (I should say, though, that the people who inherited it have improved it greatly.) It wouldn't do any good to post a link, since you need a password to get in.

The first thing I wrote that I personally consider serious was a fractal writting in PostScript. That first one is still one of the more complicated programs I've written (18 co-recursive functions). (I later figured out how to simplify it greatly.)

[LaRoza]

I have done things for myself, but the only thing I made which another person finds useful (and uses) is a batch program to prevent AOL from kicking her off-line whenever she is not "active". Downloading is not considered active so she couldn't get Windows updates or even AOL's updates. I rewrote it in C++, to make it more useful, but she didn't seem to want it so she just uses the original.

Batch may seem silly to consider a "program", so I will mention I do use PHP and MySQL and other Web based languages in addition to C++ and Python, but I do not write things for others to use (yet).

[mips]

Windows 1.0

[Brazen]

I wrote a "virus" in BASIC years ago. It required "social engineering" to get someone to run it, and then it replicated itself as a, b, c, ..., aa, ab, ..., aaa, aab, ... and on and on indefinately. I haven't touched BASIC in probably over 10 years, and I don't think I kept a copy of that little program. I remember the mechanism I came up with for it to indefinately generate new file names was pretty creative. It was entirely dynamic, it would keep adding letters to the filename to go on forever, or until the drive filled up or the program was terminated.

[Praill]

A graphical manipulation program in java for a company I used to work for.
It could basically merge images, change their encoding, mass rename the contents of a folder, and a bunch of other little things. It was actually written pretty horribly and kinda buggy but they paid me a lot for it :D

[Calash]

Using DBASE V I made a Scholarship, grant, and student loan tracking system for my tech school. Even printed out the federal forms within there acceptable standards.

[munkyeetr]

In VB6 I wrote a troubleshooting assistant called Daphne. The GUI was all menus.

The "Windows" menu gives quick access to all important Windows files and the Registry, as well as other functions commonly used.

The "Tools" menu holds external utilities for determining system info, file handling, a hex and text editor, hijack this, data recovery tools, universal archiver and extractor, etc... (because you never know what someone else's system will or won't have).

The "Online" menu linked into the default browser and provided quick access to several online system scans.

I made it for personal use and find it quite handy.

[Brazen]

In VB6 I wrote a troubleshooting assistant called Daphne. The GUI was all menus.

The "Windows" menu gives quick access to all important Windows files and the Registry, as well as other functions commonly used.

The "Tools" menu holds external utilities for determining system info, file handling, a hex and text editor, hijack this, data recovery tools, universal archiver and extractor, etc... (because you never know what someone else's system will or won't have).

The "Online" menu linked into the default browser and provided quick access to several online system scans.

I made it for personal use and find it quite handy.

That DOES look quite handy!

[wmcbrine]

I think every project I've ever done has been at least partly for learning purposes, regardless of what other purposes it might also have -- I generally pick something that's just out of my expertise and train myself up as I go.

The first thing I did that I still think is worth something was a video game for the CoCo. It's here: http://wmcbrine.freeshell.org/saucer.html

I think my description on that page is way too wordy.

[ghandi69_]

For class I had to write a program in C that had to answer this simple question.

How many different ways can you put 8 queens on a chess board without any of them being able to attack each other?? You also had to print to screen all the different ways.

I think there ended up being like 137 different ways, or something like that.

[ButteBlues]

I've written various Xchat scripts to do everything from report music from whatever player to Blackjack.

Perl was fun, but slower. Python is just a bottlenecking nightmare. Ruby is my favorite of all of them. :)

[MetalMusicAddict]

My VCR.

[Mateo]

Program to clean the temporary files from Internet Explorer 3.0. That was before the browser would clean them for you (either that or it did a terrible job at it, can't remember).

edit: in pascal

[tehbeermang]

I vaguely remember drawing a picture with code on an Apple II+ in third grade.

10 gr

it's all a blur after that.

[Altarbo]

This was partly as a learning experience, so I'm not sure if it counts.

I keep a lot of windows open, and I copy and paste a lot. This becomes a problem, because I often have 8 or 9 "untitled" notepads that I have to sort through. So I wrote this program in Visual Basic that has a regular scrolling text box, and single line text box. The single line text box contains the title of your document and the regular text box is the body. You change the file extension and directory by typing them into textboxes in the options menu. There are shortcut keys to go the different text boxes, save the current document, delete the current document, open a document, delete every file with a certain extension from a directory, and copy/cut/paste the contents of a document.

I've been thinking about writing a decent manual for it, adding an edit menu, adding code to give error messages (right now if you try to do something --like save to a non-existant directory-- that the program can't handle, it just ignores it and doesn't tell you. This isn't a big deal to me, but I can easily see how it would be frustrating to other people.), and distributing it. I'm not in a big hurry though.

[Docter]

When I left school I was lucky enough to have the opportuntiy to learn at BT Labs. I worked on an out-of-hours logging and work assigning package for engineers. Played with AI and experimental computer security things (encrypted signitures etc). Anti-virus stuff, compression and we talked a lot about time travel. I think I'm ok in saying that I signed the official secrets act as long as I dont say what for. ;)

Boffins are all nuts.

[slimdog360]

first serious thing, probably a hangman game programmed in, you guess it, visual basic. For a uni project I did program a line tracking robot which was probably the coolest, done that in c.