Introduction

[fos]

Hi everyone,

I'm fos, an old curmudgeon that started programming back in the late seventies on an IBM mainframe somewhere deep in the NERDC cave in central Florida while a student at the University of North Florida. I have never been a professional programmer. Instead I was a consulting chemist for 25 years until I started teaching somewhere here in Texas. (Sometimes I think it is the edge of darkness.)

Along the way I have played with Fortran, C, Eiffel, PIC programming, Stamp Basic, PIC Basic Pro, and a few others that I didn't care for. I have built a lot of hardware including an Altair, an 8080 breadboard, played with TRS-80s from the Model 1 Level 1 up through the everything Tandy sold including the Model II based on the Motorola processors. My favorite was the Model 100. I still have a couple of those. Way ahead of their time, they were the first viable laptop. I am aso an avid amateur radio operator. I try to build all of the equipment I use while operating QRP, my favorite mode. 72 :)

I plan on going through Beginning Linux Programming 3rd. Edition by Neil Matthews and Richard Stones, Wrox (Wiley) 2004.

It will a step by step process. I intend to post all of the validated and operational code and my personal modifications and experiments here.

Come along for the ride, post, comment, and participate. It should be fun!

Fos....

[node357]

Pleased to meet you, fos. Sounds like you've had your hands on all types of computers over the years. Ever use the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A? That was my 'toy' when I was 8, and where I learned to program in BASIC. When my dad purchased his TRS-80, I was thrilled to find BASIC there, too, but he was more interested in a copy of OS/9 he'd found. Anyway, looking forward to seeing your progress here. Thanks very much for having us :)

[fos]

I remember the the TI-99. We had one in one of the labs I worked in (Chemistry Lab)

Do you remember the Sinclair that was then bought out by Timex? They were along the same time frame. They sold in places like book stores. Pretty lame system actually. They even came as a kit at one point.

Jeff

[autek]

from one "ham" to the other.....howdy.............73

Ed W3NR

CW from beautiful downtown Chickamauga, GA

[fos]

73 back to you!

Georgia is close to my favorite place. I grew up in Jacksonvill which has been called south Georgia. I try to spend as many vacations as possible in the Dahlonega area of north Georgia. If I could only find a job up there.

I enjoy the qrp side of amateur radio. I build most of my equipment. My favorite rig is an Elecraft K2 serial no. 155.

Jeff, WD4ET

[jml]

I haven't "heard" from a Model 100 user for years. It was my first laptop as well. I cobbled together a null modem cable and connected it to my main computer at that time (An AppleIIc, with 128K of RAM) It was ahead of itst time, but still a solid unit. I still have mine, and amazingly, it still works. Unfortunately, the only programming experience I have is a touch of Applesoft Basic, so I may not be able to contribute much to this thread, but I will be lurking. :D

Joe

[fos]

Hi Joe,

You don't need any programming experience. That's the point! :)

Beginning Linux Programming

I thought I would post some free tutorial sites, or just write a few myself, if anyone is interested.

Jeff

[jml]

That sounds like a great idea, Jeff.
I'll keep checking back here.

Joe

[jacob]

Hi everyone,

I'm fos, an old curmudgeon that started programming back in the late seventies on an IBM mainframe somewhere deep in the NERDC cave in central Florida while a student at the University of North Florida. I have never been a professional programmer. Instead I was a consulting chemist for 25 years until I started teaching somewhere here in Texas. (Sometimes I think it is the edge of darkness.)

Along the way I have played with Fortran, C, Eiffel, PIC programming, Stamp Basic, PIC Basic Pro, and a few others that I didn't care for. I have built a lot of hardware including an Altair, an 8080 breadboard, played with TRS-80s from the Model 1 Level 1 up through the everything Tandy sold including the Model II based on the Motorola processors. My favorite was the Model 100. I still have a couple of those. Way ahead of their time, they were the first viable laptop. I am aso an avid amateur radio operator. I try to build all of the equipment I use while operating QRP, my favorite mode. 72 :)

I plan on going through Beginning Linux Programming 3rd. Edition by Neil Matthews and Richard Stones, Wrox (Wiley) 2004.

It will a step by step process. I intend to post all of the validated and operational code and my personal modifications and experiments here.

Come along for the ride, post, comment, and participate. It should be fun!

Fos....(Sometimes I think it is the edge of darkness.)

right.... :? jeff is a very interesting man, always cooperative and very polite

[fos]

Hi Jacob,

Thanks for checking in.

I know, it's boring. :(

I'll try to make it more exciting over the holidays.

fos..........

[patrick]

Come along for the ride, post, comment, and participate. It should be fun!


I had to share this simple example of my first experiment with python.

starting with a tab-delimited file of names already sorted with a corresponding field for the first letter of the name I wanted to index by, I was seeking an output that would list the letter followed by the names sharing that same alpha index, printing a new alpha index letter whenever the corresponding index changed. I couldn't find any on-line tools or other examples to specifically handle this problem. Phone book-type applications seemed to be the most likely candidates, but I still couldn't find what I was looking for.

I started out looking at bash but ended up liking python's documentation.

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys, string, re

inputfile = "/home/pat/chart_03.txt" #set "inputfile" to be the name of the delimitated file.
outputfile = "/home/pat/seatingchart.txt" #set "outputfile" to the name of the output file.
f = open(inputfile) #open "inputfile" for reading
o = open(outputfile, "w") #open "outputfile" for writing
o.write('A') #write alphaheader to output
o.write('\n') #write a new line marker
oldalpha = 'A'
while(1):
line = f.readline()
line = line.rstrip()
words = line.split('\t')
name = words[0]
newalpha = words[2]
if newalpha == oldalpha:
o.write(name) #write name to output
o.write('\n') #write a new line marker
else:
o.write(newalpha) #write alphaheader to output
o.write('\n') #write a new line marker
o.write(name) #write name to output
o.write('\n') #write a new line marker
oldalpha = newalpha

f.close()
o.close()


I'm sure you veterans can do this a lot more efficiently but here it is for what its worth.

My first programming experience was with Fortran IV on the IBM 1130 in the fall of 1969.