New Phone and 70+.
This week I brought a new phone. Same manufacture, same model, same OS (Android).
The company has changed a lot (most?) of the screens as to where to find a item. So now I have to re-learn where to find things. And yes, it’s a bit frustrating to have to learn / adjust to a new procedure when you were completely comfortable to the old one.
Of course, a couple months from now I will be comfortable with the new phone.
Hard bit for me is when I get a apple phone or tablet in to fix, can never remember swipe left righ up down, what ever I would do on android it appears to be the opposite on apple and I can never get it. Switching apps or closing a app is where i forget.
I’m 77, will be 78 in 3 month, and recommend “python” to write code, rather then the cumbersome, data-heavy, and excessively complex C++. I prefer procedural code over the inherent complexity of mangling code to make it data driven.
You will not regret switching to Python.
Take care, growing old is not for weaklings!
Bravo all the very best
Welcome @josef_in_Mykolaiv
Mykolaiv is in Ukraine. Let us all welcome someone from that difficult but beautiful part of the world.
I am 79, live in Australia. When I was young I worked with a very talented Ukranian man who was a medical doctor and an artist. I still have 2 of his paintings.
I agree, I stayed with plain C. Then I moved to R rather than python, because I do statistical work.
Yes, scripts are easier than code. The only down side is they are slow to execute so they may not be the best choice if you do lots of arithmetic.
I do understand that Python has some good libraries for things like image analysis.
Regards
Neville
I like C, and prefer it over C++, Modula 2, Pascal, and even coded that pachyderm Ada for a couple of years. Now I only write code for myself to make life easier - like rename to strip garbage text out many files in a directory, or compress older video files to save space using ffmpeg (CPU & APU intense)
I do believe R (rust) is the way to go for any large, complex, or meaningful development. Love my Ryzen laptop with Linux Mint installed.
BTW, i live in Ukraine and find coding quite relaxing, it helps me to focus away from Air alarms, power outages, and internet interruptions. Of course I have power banks, solar panels, and an inverter as backup.
Another option is Julia, especially for anything mathematical.
Both Rust and Julia have some issues with me, in the way they bypass the package system with updates. Python has that issue too… using pip bypasses the package system.
I know why they do it… the package system is too slow with updates for a new rapidly developing language like Rust.
I have made a start , several times learning Julia, but failed to carry on. I need a suitable large project. Old age may beat me there… it is more difficult to learn and retention is poorer.
BTW… did you know… Australia has one recently appointed Cardinal. He is Ukranian born.
https://catholicleader.com.au/news/australia/australian-cardinal-named-by-pope-francis/
So,first off, congrats on wanting to learn something new. That’s a great way to keep the old brain humming along nicely.
That said, my first thought was that you’re trying to learn four or five things all at once (C++, FLTK, yaml-cpp, cmake, git and git automation, etc.) That’s a lot.
Start with one thing, get reasonably comfortable with that, then add something else to the mix. I’m a writer (mostly in plain text) and find that git is a great way to track and version my writing, so you might consider that as a first step.
As an educator, I can say that one-and-done memorization seldom works (Okay, it worked at 16, but you’re not 16 anymore!). Rather than trying to just memorize stuff, stop and think about what you’re learning. Try to understand the ‘why’ behind it. What does that command do? Why are these variables needed? How do I make x happen? This kind of questioning as you’re learning helps you to understand it and also helps you memorize the concept it self. (Understanding the ‘why’ is at the core of adult learning theory, just so you know 
)
Repetition of concepts – repeatedly using the same commands – builds recall. With that in mind you’ll want to work through multiple tutorials with projects in your chosen language to help build your recall of the commands and functions.
Finally, give yourself some grace. You’ve only just started learning something that, it seems, is wholly out of your wheelhouse. Most of us older folks learn new things by building on things we already know because they’re related to our work. Shifting gears to learn something that is entirely new requires that we call on learning skills that are pretty rusty. It takes a bit more time to limber up those learning muscles.(mixed my metaphors there, but you get the idea!) There is absolutely no reason why you cannot learn a new language but it may just take a little more time and a little more effort. The nice thing is, at least in my observations, the more you learn the easier it becomes to learn.
Good luck on your journey!
Hi Josef,
And Welcome to the forum. I will be 75 next month. Not only learning new things changes as we grow older, but worse ( at least for me ) is short term memory. Yesterday, my son-in-law suggested a move I could watch on Netflix. Later that evening, I had to text him for the name of the movie.
Was the name hard to remember? No. It was called ‘The Net’.
Also;
Getting old is not for the faint of heart.
Getting old is not for sissies.
And I like this one.
You don’t stop laughing when you grow old; you grow old when you stop laughing. --George Bernard Shaw.
Hi Kevins,
And Welcome to ‘It’s Foss’.
I think this is correct. And I believe the opposite is also true. If a person stops learning they get into a rut. The longer you are not learning the deeper the rut gets. And the deeper the rut gets, the harder it is to get out of the rut.
Have a good day.
Howard
Yes, learning is a habit forming.
We are born with an enormous capacity for being curious about new things.
It declines with age, but we can reinforce it somewhat by getting our behaviour patterns into an arrangement that favours regular learning sessions.
Hi @kevins ,
I agree 100 % . It takes more than one pass to retain knowledge, and it is like
magnetic storage… it needs to be rejuvenated by occasional use.
There is a connection with emotions too. We all have some events we really loved , or perhaps were frightened by, that are burnt into our memory forever.
It has to mean something to you, for you to remember it.
I think programming enthusiasm is driven by need… it works best when driven by a pet project.
Thank you for your reply. I think @xahodo will find it helpful. The point about one thing at a time is quite important. One needs to focus attention.
Regards
Neville
Python has lots of statistical libraries now too. It looks to me like most of the data analysis world is moving to Python from R. That could be the Python echo chamber in action, but I think it seems pretty real to me.
Python’s PIP stuff is a bit odd. You might like it a little better if you used a new tool (written in Rust) called uv. You can create virtual environments with it. You can do your pip installs with it. You can even install multiple versions of Python with it. Give it a look along with another tool from the same company (it’s all open source) called ruff. It is also written in Rust and formats your code consistently.
There has been some move from R to Julia too. Julia also has lots of libraries… statistical, imaging, …
I dont really know python. Used to use Perl. The Python movement started when I was not very active in computing, and I sort of missed it.
Now there are competing new things like Julia and Rust. I may never catch up with Python or I may find a project and use it. Julia appeals more.
One of the notable tools written in Python is the Gentoo portage package system.
uv and ruff… not sure. I need too see them working. What will they do to my workflow?
I’ve seen you mention “R” quite a few time here - I didn’t realise that Rust and R were the same thing…
For me and you it won’t do a ton to the workflow. But for someone that does a lot of Python work, with large code bases, and uses CICD pipelines ruff is super-fast, and it allows you to run it on any commits. The Astral claim is that uv is from 10 to 100 times faster than standard PIP. Plus, it does caching and ends up being a lighter load on PyPI where the packages are pulled from. It sure does seem that fast from my use.
Starting in the 1980s, I became relatively proficient in fortran, basic, pascal, C, C+ and lisp. I had very little trouble moving from one language to another; however today, it’s a bit of a challenge.
Reflecting back on my 79++ years, aside from the inevitable mental decline, for me, what makes learning a new programming language some what more difficult are several things:
Very poor documentation that is typically inundated with far too many acronyms. Back in the 1980s, Borland International provided some of the finest, no nonsense documentation in the industry. I often wonder how many people got their start in programming as a result of Borland’s documentation and their affordable software??
Being retired, not having personal programming projects that stimulate me.
Hi @KenS
I can resonate with that.
There is nothing, for modern languages, like Kernighan and Richie’s C book .
Also the Pascal book by Jensen and Wirth is a classic teaching text.
Where can I find those sort of books for Rust, or Julia, or even Python.
That is something you can fix.
You need an interest that generates a need for programming. I get mine from my former work in statistical analysis. You surely have something that you do that needs calculations or data handling.
I am 79 too
Regards
Neville
Turbo pascal was a superb teaching tool, low cost for educational use, think we paid around 80 uk pounds for the whole college to use.
That was always on the top of me required reading text for students, one sat on my desk all year and the library copy was always signed out.
The manual with the software fell apart from over use and scotched back together. I wanted to take it with me when i moved on but the next teacher claimed it.
They are not AFAIK.
A quick search seems to prove that
Long-long ago far away in a galaxy in my childrens room…
I had a book (written by a hungarian) about Turbo Pascal 5.? and that was fair enough for me to start.
Then some years later my that time employer sometime in the middle of the 90’s (not sure the year, surely Windows 3.1 ruled most computers, Windows 95 wasn’t available yet) showed me Delphi 1.0 (it was a new thing then) and asked me if I wanted to create equivalents/substitutes of some of the DOS based programs for Windows?
I loved that, enjoyed it a lot.
Again, some years later I found Delphi personal (or something alike) and found that for my own purposes it was very well suited, and lasted for couple years.
Since a few years I’m tied to Linux, so nowadays I take Lazarus, if I need something more complicated than that fits in a shellscript.
Lazarus is a functional copy of Delphi, but on a FOSS basis.