I was in a CIS program at a community college (Computer Information Systems, not coding) and learned some things, but then I took some Adult ed. classes and they made a lot more sense - hands on stuff, no reports to write, and no very confusing textbook tutorials to go through.

As for the coding, I wish you all well, but we're yet to see a jackpot winner or anyone making a living off of even pick 3.  

Personally, in re: to lotto, I'll stick to paper and pencil "coding", it's more fun to work out and you stop yourself at a couple of bucks.

To each their own.  

Good luck.

PS

Oh yeah, you ahould see the code the state lottery and MM and PB have.

Are you picking on me? 

    Order in the court!  Order in the court.

            Okay, I'll have a burger, medium rare & a side of fries.   

Anyway, I thought you said computer cod.  No wonder this whole thread sounded fishy to me.

No, jxp, not picking on you.

There are plenty of people who covert ideas into programs every day, and they do it for a living.  People who whine about not finding anyone to covert their ideas into a program have not bother to contact one of these people because they probably know their ideas is not worth someones time if they expect to be paid for it.

Looks like most of the really sharp people here have done exactly that. Wow.

I can now add C++ to my arsenal programming skills. After a few weeks of self study, I think I'm getting it. I've been working with a variety of documentation, but the best one I've found so far is SAMS Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days, 5th edition, Jesse Liberty, Bradley Jones.

I've never been good at C, or cared for its syntax, but I have a few sam's books so I figure they could teach it decent.

JADE, what is C letting you do easier than whatever language you were using before? 

time*treat,

C++ is more powerful and faster than higher level languages like BASIC, Quick Basic, Visual Basic or COBOL. It's close enough to Assembly language to be almost Assembly, but without the cryptic 3 or 4 letter mnemonic. Plus it helps in organizing code in a way that was always hard to do in Assembly. Assembly language is just one step above the actual machine code, which is just 1's and 0's. C++ is just one step above Assembly, likewise. In addition, C++ is far more flexible than higher languages like BASIC or COBOL. There are far more coding tweaks, manipulations, techniques and lower level functions that are hard to impossible to do in the higher level languages.

Heh, I had forgotten about assembly. I did pretty good at that. I just picked up a C++ in 21 book (4th ed.), so I'll see if I can learn a new trick or two in the next couple of months.

I am almost completely self-taught; I think the only thing I got out of taking a few computer classes was the idea of modular programming.

I was doing school in the late 1970s when a friend of mine showed me a puzzle contest he subscribed to. Every couple of weeks there was a new puzzle, and there was a valuable prize to be won. I had no experience with computers at all, at this point, but from what I had heard about them it seemed that a computer would be able to solve the puzzles handily. I signed up for a course in Fortran IV, but it was too slow. I taught myself from the textbook and quit going to class. I wrote the program I wanted and it worked, getting me into the last tiebreaker. To win, I needed to learn more about programming and I needed more access than I could get to the school's PDP-11.

When my friend saw the level of success I was having, he borrowed several thousand dollars from his rich brother and bought an Apple II+, which he gave me access to when he wasn't writing his own program to do the same thing. I learned Basic from Apple's manual, translated my program and went on.

I never learned enough to win the last tiebreaker, which was a lot harder than the puzzles leading up to it. Before I could, the contest changed its rules and made winners sign an affidavit that no data processing equipment had been used to win. I knew then that only people who had no problem signing false statements would be able to win the contest, and abandoned my project. However, since then, I've found many, many uses for programming. I've even published a book based on some programs I've written.

I miss the Basic compiler that used to be included with MS-Dos. I've never found anything better for programming "on the fly."