I'm one of those people who got enthusiastic about the web quite early on, around 1996/97. Back then, access to the web was still subject to a minimum one-minute wait, punctuated by fax noises ending with “dzoïng boïng doïng”. We were thrown out after 30 seconds of surfing for unknown and unjustified reasons, but that was the state of the art in the late 20th century. Fascinated, I spent my nights on it, trying to understand the mechanics behind it all. And what had to happen happened: I started making websites. Initially in HTML, then javascripts and, later, PHP pages. I threw myself into it headfirst, in my forties.
And here we go again: for scripts as for music theory, it took me ages to assimilate a notion that math people had in their DNA. I really struggled with it and understood what I could. But I was never at ease with programming, because even when I analyzed the situation well, when I reduced a process to a series of simple steps, I didn't have the reflexes of a guy who was good or even at ease with math. I was making life more complicated for lack of a clear vision of the options offered by the language.
As I began to detail some fairly simple PHP scripts, I saw that there were functions. I didn't make the connection right away, because I must have already skipped functions when we saw them at school. Probably also because of my usual slowness to catch on. But that's when I realized that variables were declared so that they could be used in scripts, so that the script would work regardless of the value given to the variable. It took a week or two for this to sink in.
And suddenly: “ Damn, but it's obvious! A variable, it varies!” So this was what I'd vaguely heard about in high school, values that varied. Variables were french language! With a superhuman effort of memory, I then remembered that I had also heard of constants. With a bit of luck, these were values that didn't change, so they were constant. Great! But... much, much too late! I'd been so traumatized by maths, so doubtful that mathematical language resembled standard french, that I'd mentally closed off any possibility of correspondence between the two.
While we're on the digital side of things, I also gradually learned to use a certain number of software programs, the same as everyone else, including Excel... It shouldn't surprise you that I've never been very comfortable with this thing, whose grids have always reminded me of a prison, a cage. They themselves refer to it as cells... It's a sign, isn't it? Knowing that I'd have to use it from time to time, I began to work out the formulas and all that. And one day, wanting to make an income/expenses type of table, I look for the formula for subtractions. I'd already spotted SUM and PRODUCT, so I was looking for DIFFERENCE or something like that. And... nothing! I asked a buddy who laughed at me explaining that, of course, there's no DIFFERENCE formula, since all you have to do is use SUM by adding a negative number. Of course, 10-9 is the same as 10+(-9). So what's the point of a DIFFERENCE function, eh? Ha ha ha!
I wasn't too keen on spreadsheets before that, but from that day on, I developed an aversion to them and was unable to make the slightest progress in their use.
