The very first thing I ever saw on a computer was a game - 'moonlander' on a {I really can't remember - I was 10, but an old mainframe of some description} using a teletype - I had the printout of my 1st succesful landing on my bedroom wall until it disintegrated. At that moment, 'computer' and 'game' became inextricably linked in my mind. As I progressed in my gameplaying, I enjoyed the 'meta' aspects more - sussing how games worked, and what skills were necessary to get better at them.

I eventually realised that 'solving' a game was a part of what was really fun for me - puzzles. Crosswords, bridge hands, backgammon positions, Day Of The Tentacle clues - all excuses to exercise the little grey cells. When I started programming, I quickly realised that this was the ultimate puzzle-solving device - you could take *any* real-world situation, express it in the means of your choosing (I started with ASM, and landed up eventually in perl - just getting lazier as I get older I suppose :) ) and then solve it. In fact the whole process was one of puzzles within puzzles - every line of code can be turned into a little problem in itself: "how can this be done neater / smaller / prettier?". Lovely.

To sum up, (and indeed, stop ranting and answer the bl**** question) I think that computer work is fun because it enables me to program. Perl is fun because it allows me to write those programs quicker, and with a greater degree of elegance and beauty than other languages (though if I were stuck on a desert island with nothing but a C compiler, I'd not worry too much). And finally, programming is fun because ...ermmmm...to paraphrase Woody Allen, it's solving puzzles with someone I love :)

Top Node.
Ben.

I have loved computers and programming ever since my dad showed me that they can be used for more than math problems in school. We were at Sears one day and they had a TI-99 on display and he wrote a two line BASIC program:

10 PRINT "MATT"
20 GOTO 10
[download]

I started checking books out at the library on computers and programming. I started writing BASIC programs on notebook paper in hope that I'd get some extra time to try them out after school in the computer lab.

It didn't take very long for me to grow thirsty. Extremely thirsty actually and the only beverage that would quench that thirst was knowledge. The library had an almost endless supply of knowledge just waiting for me to pour a glass. So I continued going back for refills. I had tasted power early on and I had liked it.

Over the years, I found different sources to quench my thirst and then I found Perl. By this time, I had already been tainted by the likes of JavaScript and Visual Basic. Perl cleansed me of those evils over the course of a few years. My ever expanding knowledge of Perl has increased my thirst though... I may never eat again.

1. Why computer work is fun for you?

I'm an information junkie. Remembering is hard for me, while I'm good at looking things up. With a computer, looking up is much faster and easier. I can get customer information instantly when I'm on the phone, and I can find all kinds of information without needing to go to a library.

2. Why programming is fun for you?

Because I can tell the computer what to do. Usually, I tell it to help me look information up.

3. Why programming perl is fun for you?

Perl's syntax and flexibility match the way I think, so Perl usually DWIM. I'm lazy, so I like re-using code. Especially other people's code :)

Juerd
- http://juerd.nl/
- spamcollector_perlmonks@juerd.nl (do not use).

1. Why computer work is fun for you?

   Flexibility.

   From 3D graphics to text processesing, assembler, device drivers to predicting the weather. There is simply no field of human endevour that hasn't been touched by computers in some way. Modeling social behaviour, whether it's voting patterns, exit flows from building or aircraft in panic situations or bidding at auctions. Even the most fundemental of human activities, child conseption, birth and rearing via ultrasound scanners, fetal heart monitors and baby alarms, they all involve and increasingly rely on computers and software. From the search for extra-terrestials to interfacing artificial eyes to the human brain--anything is possible.

   As 14 y/o, I was one of the first year ever (in the UK) to study for the new CSE in Computer Science (there was no O'level yet). One of the first things we did was to visit the offices of a large company (Shell) that had a recently installed state-of-the-art mainframe. It occupied 2 floors and a total floor area of around 10,000 sq.ft. of air conditioned office space behind glass partitions with air-lock doors. The men and women inside wore white coats. A few weeks later they showed the Micheal Caine/Harry Palmer movie, The Billion Dollar Brain, on TV. This was 1972--it used to take years for movies to make it onto TV back then. I was hooked.

   That year was the start of my fascination for computers and computing. With the exception of a couple of years recently when work-related stress combined with other troubles to quiet literally destroyed my interest in anything to do with computers, I have never really lost my passion for them, what they can do, what they might be able to do and the part I might play in that. My discovery of Perl was the renaissance of my interest.

2. Why programming is fun for you?

   Because it's something I can be good at. I am not musical. I can draw, but very, very slowly and without any real artistic flair. I was apprenticed as a mechanical engineer and showed some apptitude for it, even some skill, but very few mechanical engineers ever get to design a complete project, and even rarer is it that they get to design anything new. Once you've designed one towing bracket, seat belt adjuster or window winder mechanism, there is very little gratification in designing a second. As a programmer (I refuse to use the term software engineer), I have worked on OS components including the 2D graphics for a windowing system. Device drivers for TV/Teletext cards. A very large scale LAN/WAN automated software installation and maintainance system. Financial systems, high speed transaction systems, embedded software and process control systems. Despite the incredibly thorough and comprehensive compendiums of work by people like Donald Knuth and others, there are still individual problems that require individual solutions, that can be designed and implemented by individuals and small groups. If I wanted to design my own car, plane or house, I'd need many thousands of pounds, and many thousands of hours, and the end result may be unsatistactory. If I want to write my own language, I need a system that costs less than 1 thousand pounds, some software that comes with it or is free, time and inspiration. If the result is unsatisfactory,I can start over or enhance what I have.

   Underlying my fascination is that maybe, just maybe, I'll invent a new algorithm, something that is unique. Unlikely as it is, the possibility exists and is can and still does happen. I'm not looking to make millions, but I would enjoy having found something I could put my name too. Small chance and small rewards, but enough to have kept my interest (with a couple of odd diversions), for 30 years. And that awe I felt as a 15 y/o is still alive. Suppressed maybe by the commonplaceness of it all. Somewhat jaded by the experience of the commercial world, but it's still there. It still amazes me that the 4lb laptop I'm typing on probably has more raw cpu power and several hundered times as much memory (though somewhat less permenant storage) as that multi-million pound, 10,000 sq.ft. monster I saw all those years ago.

3. Why programming perl is fun for you?

   I'm currently, and for the last nearly a year, in the position of having the time to explore all the half-baked ideas I have wanted to pursue for the last 20 years when the pressures of work, lack of free time, and life in general, did not allow me pursue. I won't be able to keep it up much longer, the ugly reality that living requires an income will bring it to an end soon, but I am determined to try as many of those ideas as I can in the meantime. When I started to recover my interest in programming, I taught myself Java. Enough to pass the three Brainbench Java certificates back when they were still free, but when it came to actually writing real projects in the language, I laboured. Not with the concepts of OO, I'd been doing those in Smalltalk and C++ for years, but simply the process of generating, testing and debugging the code. Forever falling foul of incompatibilties between releases of the class hierarchies. Struggling to work out which of the myriad variations-on-a-theme, of each of the oh-so-similar set of classes, I needed to use to allow me to implement the idea in my head. And all the time, there was simply no real forum for getting help.Then, through a quirk of family relationships, I got involved in something that brought me to Perl and PerlMonks.

   Perl does it all. Quickly, easily and directly. Limitations of raw performance aside, which can and have been addressed by the Inline::C (since I recently succedded in building my own version of Perl), I've yet to encounter an idea or problem that I couldn't at least make a darn good crack at solving. any limitations being mine rather than of the language. At least to the point of deciding that the approach I was taking did or did not have merit. And, for now, that is enough. I'm far from having Merlyn's depth of knowledge of perl, tye's mathematical prowess, or Abigail's knowledge of algorithms, but I have achieved a state of "being comfortable" with perl greater than any other language I have used--a loong list. Very few of my programs so far have been greater than a couple of hundred lines and most considerably less, but each idea I have pursued has come to a state where I have taken it far enough to satisfy myself that the idea underlying it was either worth pursuing further at some later date, or going nowhere useful. Each and every piece of code I've written in perl has achieved some level of fruition. The same cannot be said for any of the other languages I have used. The difference is that perl appears to have a reasonable, low-effort, solution to every run-of-the-mill programming problem--out of the box. That means I spend less time and effort constructing the infra-structure of the overall solution I'm looking for and I don't get bogged down in the detail (despite the benchmarks). As I get more practiced and more problems under my belt, I gain the confidence to try out bigger and harder problems, and each and every time Perl is right there with all the tools I need to make a first, competent if incomplete stab at it.

   Perl is like the Meccano constructor set I had as a boy. A few, well chosen, neatly dove-tailing components that can be stuck together in an infinite number of ways. The limits are your imagination, and where software is concerned, I still have the imagination of a boy. Anything is possible:).

I am blessed with a stellar amount of hubris. Boring, repetitive tasks are below me. Boring, repetitive tasks are what computers excel at. Consequently:

I like computers because they do the boring stuff for me. I'm left free to dedicate my mind to more important stuff.

I like programming because it's the way to get the computer to get stuff done. And I like the mathematical way of thinking it requires.

I like Perl because even when programming, there are boring things to do - keeping track of memory being the main one of course, in the myriad of incarnations this responsibility takes. Other things that come to mind are keeping track of synthetic code and variables for loops and other condititions. But with Perl, I don't have to - almost never have to. And that's why I like it.

Makeshifts last the longest.

I've been programming since the days of the old Osborne I. It was a great day when I goot my first pascal compiler. Came on 3 5 1/4 disks and used multiple overlays. You used to have to change disks just to compile anything. I've been hooked ever since.

As far as using Perl, I enjoy it from the aspect you can do so much so quickly and with so little code, but thank god for CPAN too!

There is no emoticon for what I'm feeling now.

1. Why computer work is fun for you?------Because I'm a dreamer and cyberspace is a pure and abstract place like a dream.

2. Why programming is fun for you?-------Because it's like "Tinker Toys for adults"? For me it's like running. A runner "plays a game against himself". Fun programming is like that. You set a goal of some program, and then try to do it. Great personal satisfaction comes from completion, like the runner who finishes a long run. Even if no one but you ever knows you did it. :-)

3.Why programming perl is fun for you?----It's powerful enough to do anything, but has enough "artificial intelligence" to make things easy to do.

My answer to all of these is yet another question---'How not?' Before I became a programmer, I'd spent most of my life as an art major. The last thing I did before the switch was a honorable mention in that years Sterling Silver Today competition. I would certainly have continued except for the small matter of making a living! Not wanting to do things by halves, I walked across the campus and sat down in front of a model 029 keypunch machine and 'never looked back'! Needless to say I got a lot of 'cross discipline' questions, mostly along the lines of 'how could you do that?' My answer over the years has gradually distilled down to the observation that all things considered, I hadn't really changed anything.

To me, all there is an addiction to creation. The desire to create something that hadn't existed before by the exercise of ones mind and body is at the basis of everything I do. I've know this since I was capable of reflective thinking. For me writing a program and running it provides exactly the same 'fix' that designing a drinking cup in gold and silver does. There is no discernable difference between casting bronze and cutting code. In physical detail the design of a program in Perl and a painting in mixed media may differ by the process of traveling from concept to actuality is the same. No matter how you dress it up, design is still design. It doesn't matter if you call it an art, a science, a craft or voodoo---it is still the same thing. Obviously the 'subject' may change, but all of the rest stays the same. And frankly if you don't enjoy design and creation, I really wouldn't recommend either programming or being an art major!

--hsm

However, programming, especially in Perl, is extremely fun for me. The challenge of solving a problem is like a drug. (My wife calls me a problem-solving junkie.) I just lament that computer programming has to be done on computers, cause it's the most lucrative problem-solving arena I've found (so far).

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.