ACCU Mentored Developers Profile

Paul F. Johnson

Email: paulf.johnson (at-spam-protection) ukonline.co.uk ^*
Website:

I started programming way way back (well, 1981 to be exact) on an archaic Sinclair ZX81 (never did get around to making it upto 16K) and progressed from there to an Oric-1, Sinclair ZX Spectrum (to play games on, though I did write a couple of adventures on it) to a BBC B. I released my first program commercially on the BBC B (an Organic Chemistry testing game) then took a long break... 

After a break of about 6 years, I started working in a school and was loaned an Acorn A3000 which served me well for a good few years until I managed to get hold of an Acorn RiscPC700. About this time, I started playing with FORTRAN 77 and I was off.

I have since written software on a freelance basis in C for RiscStation Ltd, many articles on C and RISC OS WIMP C programming and have recently taken (and passed) my City and Guilds C++ programming levels 3 and 4 at St. Helens College. You can find me quite frequently on alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++ helping out where I can.

A hate I have on the likes of a.c.l.l.c-c++ is the amount of poor education given to students. I cannot believe that after 4 years since the C++ standard and 3 years since the last iteration of the C standard, that students are taught the likes of void main(), iostream.h and use of conio.h without the knowledge that the likes of conio are not part of the standard.

Since the start of the year, I've also moved from RISC OS onto Linux and found it so much more fun that I'd imagined.

Currently, I work at Salford University in the Music Media and Performance school fixing the website, writing CGI scripts and other webby sort of things. I'm currently trying to learn Java (without much success). As a pasttime, I am re-writing in C++ the classic management game from the 1980's, Football Manager. The aim is to release it open source and let others add their own platform parts to it. After that, I'm going to start on my own adventure creator & player.

I'm not sure why, but in even in Manchester & Liverpool, I cannot seem to find any programming jobs - I fall between the the academic and experience trap; I have the knowledge, just not the experience.

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