[junto]

As a fellow Brit and as someone working in C# everyday, Jon Skeet is somewhat of a personal hero of mine. I can't count the number of times I've turned to StackOverflow and found the answer to have be written by him. Chappeau!

Interestingly we appear to have had similar paths to get to our careers. I too started off with BASIC and the BBC B Micro. I then went on to study Computer Science at GCSE, A-Level and then at university. Jon must be a similar age to me, so I'm guessing he also was one of the first to take GCSE's after the UK switched from the 'O-level' (1990-1991).

Great little interview. Thanks for sharing @eddie_31003.

[bohinjc]

off-topic, but it always amaze me how 'chappeau' finished with 2 'p', as did a lot of English words derived from middle/old french (single to double-n or double-p are common).

Out of curiosity from a non-native speaker : does the double-p makes it more idiomatic for native English speakers ?

[topbanana]

It's not an English word

[weavie]

Snap! Did my comp sci GCSE in 1990.

[hellodevnull]

How was it? I didn't have an option to take CS either for GCSE or A-Level. There was IT but most university departments actually discouraged it and recommended just taking science and maths.

[weavie]

To be honest it was so long ago I can't really remember too much. I recall trying to learn SQL and relational theory but just not getting it and thinking I would never use it anyway - how naive I was! That might have been A-Level.

They taught us BASIC, I can't remember the computers we had, I don't think they were popular ones. I do remember one of my colleagues really struggled with his practical project because he named all his variables a, aa, aaa, aaaa and so on. There was a maximum variable length of 8 characters so things went all wrong when he needed to use 9 variables. I don't think we were taught anything about quality software development, using decent variable names, algorithms etc..

Overall I did find the courses incredibly easy and I aced both without even trying. It was university where things started to get a bit more challenging.

I did science and maths as well, I did get much more out of those courses.

[junto]

We got taught lots of basic stuff in GCSE. I remember high level stuff about computer parrts, peripherals, etc. Not much about networking. All very 'fluffy'.

A-level started more programming. We learnt Turbo Pascal (6 maybe?). I wrote my own DOS based windowing app for a sailing (racing) management tool. .

[plant42]

As did I, though I started with a Commodore VIC-20.