Interview with Jon Skeet(blog.fogcreek.com) |
Interview with Jon Skeet(blog.fogcreek.com) |
Interestingly we appear to have had similar paths to get to our careers. I too started off with BASIC and the BBC B Micro. I then went on to study Computer Science at GCSE, A-Level and then at university. Jon must be a similar age to me, so I'm guessing he also was one of the first to take GCSE's after the UK switched from the 'O-level' (1990-1991).
Great little interview. Thanks for sharing @eddie_31003.
Out of curiosity from a non-native speaker : does the double-p makes it more idiomatic for native English speakers ?
Whatta guy!
http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-facts
Can someone explain the significance of Jon Skeet, preferebly in terms of "Facts" in the style of Bruce Schneier's [1] or Jeff Dean's [2]?
[1] http://www.schneierfacts.com/ [2] http://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-Jeff-Dean-facts
[0] http://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet [1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6841333/why-is-subtractin...
It's a little like there's Jon Skeet, then there's nothing for a while, then there's somebody else. His average reputation increase per day is often more than 300. Of course, 200 is the typical "cap" on daily increase, but somehow he Skeets around that. He'll probably reach a million points this year.
Not that I think reputation points on Stack Overflow is very interesting or meaningful, of course. :)
http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-facts
Science Fact: Jon Skeet cannot parse HTML using regular expressions [0]
(edited for clarity)
They taught us BASIC, I can't remember the computers we had, I don't think they were popular ones. I do remember one of my colleagues really struggled with his practical project because he named all his variables a, aa, aaa, aaaa and so on. There was a maximum variable length of 8 characters so things went all wrong when he needed to use 9 variables. I don't think we were taught anything about quality software development, using decent variable names, algorithms etc..
Overall I did find the courses incredibly easy and I aced both without even trying. It was university where things started to get a bit more challenging.
I did science and maths as well, I did get much more out of those courses.
A-level started more programming. We learnt Turbo Pascal (6 maybe?). I wrote my own DOS based windowing app for a sailing (racing) management tool. .
(Ps, add your own id to see when you reach it: http://www.hasjonskeetreachedonemillionyet.com/155689 Mine is in quite a few years)