No lie, after taking about 2 weeks of my first programming course in university, I did almost exactly this, trying to make a poker game.
I hadn't learned about objects, or functions, or even loops. Just one big method that had an if for every hand permutation.
I hadn't ever been exposed to programming before, and I loved it, but I knew nothing about it. Those were the only tools I had in my toolbox, and you know what they say about how when you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail.
I'm a professional dev now, so I really hope I grew out of it lol
Back when I was learning, I made a flashcard program. It had a class that was essentially a constant array, so you could call get(int i), and it would return an object describing both sides of the card.
How did I implement such a class you ask? First, I made a spreadsheet with 2 collumns to hold the data, with a third collumn of incrementing integers. Then, in the 4th column, I used string concatanation to right a java if statement that compared a variable against the index collumn; and if they match, return an object constructed from the 2 data columns.
Click and drag the 1 cell I wrote in the 4th collumn to replicate it in all the rows, then copy and paste the 4th collumn into notepad++.
I'd like to say I've moved past this; but my most successful projects have mostly been code generation ones; so really I've just moved past Excell.
I mean, moving past Excel is still an excellent development.
Signed, a guy that keeps dealing with people who need my code to spit out weird spreadsheets.
Time to get some qbasic coding in, your if and goto experience will do wonders
I'm a professional dev now, so I really hope I grew out of it lol
I was reading your comment and wondering if I've outgrown it. I've been a programmer for 20 years...
I'm going on 15 years.
Some times I'm not so sure.
I still remember when "the light went on" as realized how variables worked. I was on my way to school and couldn't focus on mundane things and started hating school.
Now I live in a van down by the river. But I'm still coding!
Same thing with me and chess in high school. I learned TrueBASIC, and I didn't learn about arrays or subroutines. But, I did manage to make a chess application that two people could play a game of chess on. It highlighted legal moves when you clicked on a piece and ensured that only legal moves were made. It also showed the captured pieces to the side of the board. I think I had it set up so that you could only promote to a previously captured piece, but all the other rules were implemented properly (or at least, I assumed they were).
The implementation involved a bunch of variables for each individual chess piece and a bunch of if statements inside a loop. I remember describing arrays and explaining that I wished they existed, but never actually found out they did until I was finished. I don't know how many lines of code it was, but when I copied it into Word, and it spanned about 350 pages in total.
Part of me is proud of the accomplishment. Another part is horrified.
That's why its good to have a mentor or someone just to give feedback if we can find one for ourselves
To be fair, or only took a few more classes before they introduced things like arrays and loops, and I realized how stupid my plan was lol
No lie, after taking about 2 weeks of my first programming course in university, I did almost exactly this, trying to make a poker game.
I hadn't learned about objects, or functions, or even loops. Just one big method that had an
iffor every hand permutation.I hadn't ever been exposed to programming before, and I loved it, but I knew nothing about it. Those were the only tools I had in my toolbox, and you know what they say about how when you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail.
I'm a professional dev now, so I really hope I grew out of it lol
Back when I was learning, I made a flashcard program. It had a class that was essentially a constant array, so you could call get(int i), and it would return an object describing both sides of the card.
How did I implement such a class you ask? First, I made a spreadsheet with 2 collumns to hold the data, with a third collumn of incrementing integers. Then, in the 4th column, I used string concatanation to right a java if statement that compared a variable against the index collumn; and if they match, return an object constructed from the 2 data columns.
Click and drag the 1 cell I wrote in the 4th collumn to replicate it in all the rows, then copy and paste the 4th collumn into notepad++.
I'd like to say I've moved past this; but my most successful projects have mostly been code generation ones; so really I've just moved past Excell.
I mean, moving past Excel is still an excellent development.
Signed, a guy that keeps dealing with people who need my code to spit out weird spreadsheets.
Time to get some qbasic coding in, your if and goto experience will do wonders
I was reading your comment and wondering if I've outgrown it. I've been a programmer for 20 years...
I'm going on 15 years. Some times I'm not so sure.
I still remember when "the light went on" as realized how variables worked. I was on my way to school and couldn't focus on mundane things and started hating school.
Now I live in a van down by the river. But I'm still coding!
Same thing with me and chess in high school. I learned TrueBASIC, and I didn't learn about arrays or subroutines. But, I did manage to make a chess application that two people could play a game of chess on. It highlighted legal moves when you clicked on a piece and ensured that only legal moves were made. It also showed the captured pieces to the side of the board. I think I had it set up so that you could only promote to a previously captured piece, but all the other rules were implemented properly (or at least, I assumed they were).
The implementation involved a bunch of variables for each individual chess piece and a bunch of if statements inside a loop. I remember describing arrays and explaining that I wished they existed, but never actually found out they did until I was finished. I don't know how many lines of code it was, but when I copied it into Word, and it spanned about 350 pages in total.
Part of me is proud of the accomplishment. Another part is horrified.
That's why its good to have a mentor or someone just to give feedback if we can find one for ourselves
To be fair, or only took a few more classes before they introduced things like arrays and loops, and I realized how stupid my plan was lol