How Can an Old-School Coder Regain His Chops?

Posted by timothy on Sunday August 1, 2010 @10:41AM from the just-eat-the-brain-of-someone-younger dept.

DonLab writes "I was a proficient software engineer in the 1980s, writing hundreds of thousands of lines of ALGOL, FORTRAN, COBOL, and Pascal programs, as well as working in 370 and 8080 assembly language & pre-relational DBMS systems. My hands-on programming career ended when I became a freelance analyst and designer, ultimately retiring young in the early '90s. Now I'd like to reenter the field, but I'm finding that I know nothing about today's post-C languages, programming tools, and computing environments. I wouldn't know where to start learning C++, PHP, Java, HTML5, or PERL, much less how to choose one over the other for a particular application. Can I be the only pre-GUI software designer or hobbyist searching for a way to update his skills for Windows, iOS, or Android?"

3 of 565 comments (clear)

iPhone app developer by rainmouse · 2010-08-01 13:18 · Score: 4, Funny

If you develop apps for the new iPhone, can I put in a request for an app that uses GPS to direct you towards the nearest public phone box.
Thanks.
1. Re:iPhone app developer by stillnotelf · 2010-08-01 13:55 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Clark Kent? Is that you?
Re:C-sharp by boredsenseless · 2010-08-01 15:07 · Score: 4, Funny

"We need a name that's witty at first, but that seems less funny each time you hear it." - Seymour Skinner