"Could You Explain Programming Please"

by Banned 10 replies
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Being a programmer and the only computer literate person in my family, I get tech support calls from my family all the time. I got a phonecall from a brother-in-law today:
Him: Hey, you're good with computers right?
Me: Yes.
Him: And you know how to program computers?
Me: Yes, thats my job actually.
Him: Could you explain programming please?
Me: I'm sorry, what do you mean?
Him: I want to make a game like Halo, but I don't know how to start. Could you explain what I need to do?
Me: You should probably go to the library and get a book.
Him: Can you just tell me what I need to do?
Me: Wait a minute. Are you asking me to explain how to program computers?
Him: Yeah.
Me: Over the phone?
Him: Yeah.

My brother in law apparently made several unsuccessful attempt to "learn programming" by opening up exes in Notepad. He created a text file with the words "Morph the screen into something cool" and couldn't figure out how to run it, even had the balls to ask me "how do I install my program? Do I just put a shortcut on the desttop".
My dad, a programmer, lent him an unfortunately titled book called "Teach Yourself Java in 24 hours". He immediately flipped to the back of the book and reading sections on server and Swing development, and was very excited to see that he could write his own server after just one day.
In the end, I was unable to teach my brother in law how to make his own Halo over the phone, and he decided that I wasn't a very good programmer.
#programming
  • Your sister must lead quite an interesting life!
  • Haha... if it was that easy then everyone would just be doing it. I want to make a game like Halo.. lol... classic. It appears then that all these games programmers have wasted four years of their life studying at University. All they needed to do was make 'one' phone call.

    Thanks for the laugh!
  • lmao.. I want to make a game like Halo, too.. but unfortunately, that requires a lot more than programming skills.

    At one point I actually wrote a Quake-style engine (very loosely based on the GPL'd Quake 2 source code) and was going to create a game with it. That's when I found out I'd need to learn a lot of other things like 3D modeling and map building.
  • Two of my friends work in the games industry. One was the chief animator for Grand Theft Auto 4 among other games and the other is a games programmer who seems to have been working on a 3D engine for years?! It's all over my head though... i'm quite happy sticking with php and mySQL for now.
  • I just have one question - does he use that slide out tray on his computer for a cup holder or has he progressed to knowing it's for dvd's? LMAO Great story!
  • Send him lesson one:

    10 REM MY FIRST PROGRAM
    15 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
    20 GOTO 15

    He should be able to work the rest out from there.

    Cheers,

    Neil
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • 10 REM MY SECOND PROGRAM
    15 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
    20 GOSUB 30
    25 GOTO 15
    30 PRINT "GOODBYE WORLD"
    35 RETURN
  • LMAO I get calls from family and friends too, but I have to say that one takes the cake!
  • This is funny. But truth is, I can totally relate to that. It's really to explain things to them, especially if they know nothing about computers.
  • Tell him to add code to the text shown in the link. It's how I learned (many thanks to the guys on this forum) the basics:


    http://www.unf.edu/~broggio/cop2221/2221pseu.htm
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    "Could You Explain Programming Please"

    Being a programmer and the only computer literate person in my family, I get tech support calls from my family all the time. I got a phonecall from a brother-in-law today: Him: Hey, you're good with computers right? Me: Yes.