At the moment I am working my way through the FUZE BASIC reference guide, sometimes reading through it, sometimes using it alongside the FUZE to practise coding.
One of the difficult things about learning anything new (be it foreign language, card game, computer code) is maintaining enthusiasm and motivation as everyday distractions get in the way.
This is particularly the case when you reach that point where you become aware of just how much you don’t know – the “known unknowns”.
To begin with, you make some easy progress, learning lots of new things quickly. But there always comes the point of sudden awareness when you realise just how much there is to learn to master the topic.
It is at this point that enthusiasm and motivation can wane when the size of the task (and effort required) dawns on you.
Of course, it always helps to have a reason to learn something e.g. to get a better job, move to a new country etc.
I also like to read other people’s experience s of their trials and tribulations in a similar field.
At the moment I am reading The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll. Written in the late 1980s (when the BASIC language was ubiquitous on home computers), it recounts Stoll’s efforts to track down a hacker who was illegally accessing various computers across institutions in the US.
Reading it is helping me appreciate the practical applications of learning programming. But the story also reminds me that even the ‘experts’ are fallible (especially when it comes to new technology), that everyone has to start somewhere, and the power of perseverance.
The book is also an excellent account of computing and the internet in the 1980s.
“Steve …first learned to program a computer by mail: he’d write a program at school, send it to a computer center, and receive the printout a week later. Steve claims that this makes you write good programs first time, since each mistake wastes a week of your time.”
Those of us learning with the FUZE have it easy by comparison!
Stoll, C. (1989) The Cuckoo’s Egg: tracking a spy through a maze of computer espionage. The Bodley Head: London
