_     _             
                        _ __ | |__ | | ___   __ _ 
                       | '_ \| '_ \| |/ _ \ / _` |
                       | |_) | | | | | (_) | (_| |
                       | .__/|_| |_|_|\___/ \__, |
                       |_|    ...2017-09-03 |___/ 

In defense of terrible languages
Theme music for this post: Jens Blidon - The Magic Writer.sid
I'm not exactly sick and tired of hearing about how this and that language is
just so terrible and nobody should ever even touch it, but I'm somewhat annoyed
about it. I do not consider myself a particularly gifted programmer, but I do
manage to hold a job doing it,  and I've been doing it, with varying 
intensity and success, mind you, since I was 11 years old. Back then, I didn't
understand English, and I was rather bad at reading in my native language too.
But I brushed with BASIC on my C64, and wrote a few weird things, like (hard-
coded) disk catalogs, with accompanying launchers for my games, simple text-
based adventures (in Danish, filled with mistakes of course). Long story short,
BASIC was my first language, and I proceeded with QBASIC in my early
teens. Then on to PHP and MySQL. I also did a bit of VBA. So, I've touched all
the terrible, terrible languages, and they might have ruined me somehow. But
those languages did something that none of the others did. Something very
important for someone who has to find out everything by themselves, and who may
not be particularly smart either; They were fucking there! They were available!
Somehow, someone who didn't even know what the words compiler, virtual machine,
or interpreter meant, still manages to grab those languages, and make something.
Sure, I taught myself C and C++, Java, JS later, but, I'd never have gotten my
feet wet had it not been for those oh' so terrible languages. That's the point
I'd like to make: It's not that Python would have dropped in my lab, had I not
been tainted by PHP. It's not that a C compiler had been shipped with my OS, had
not QBASIC been on the disk. I wouldn't even have gotten to the start, never
developed the interest. So, maybe the world would have been without just another
mediocre programmer, but, you don't need to be a genius to contribute, you just
need to be good enough. Not being bad is enough to make a positive difference.
So, forgive me my humble beginnings, and the crudeness they may have inflicted
on my style of writing, but without those terrible languages, there would not
have been any style at all. So,  while the world may have been better off
without it, without me as a programmer, I wouldn't. So, all there's
left to say, is this: Thank you for being there, for being understandable enough
that I also had a chance. Thank you for that admission into the wonderful world
of computer programming that no one else would or could give me.

                                                                         - OUT