Learned bash scripting age 17 for the sole purpose of automatically downloading porn using wget.

Lmao I’ve never learned how to program. I’m just winging it and have been able to fool everyone the last 10 years.

Senior engineer checking in.

Everyone be like "I started programming at the age of 2 and my first ever spoken words were “for...each”".

We get it, child prodigy.

Don't mind me I'm just salty that I only discovered programming after taking the wrong course at uni which coincidentally had an extraneous Fortran module.

When I was in school I had some guys walk up to me and asked:

G: Are you Feeno?
Me: Yes, what's up?
G: We need our FY project on school management system done.
Me: Okay?
G: How much will that cost us?
Me: *confused because I was still a freshman. At that point the only programming language I knew was elementary qbasic. I couldn't even write a hello world program without the help of Google*
So played along because yes we're talking about money here.

Me: It will cost you guys N amount of money (*improvised deep voice*).
G: Okay. Fair price.
* Right there they transferred half the requested amount to me. *
Holy moly! This guys aren't joking around. I don't know shit! They clearly mistook me for a senior student whose first name is Feeno, to me that was a nick referred to me by my friends.

I'm in this one for sure and it's a do or die transaction cus I'm returning no fucking money. I told my friends what had happened and they insisted I return back the money to the students and admit I can't deliver the project they were requesting.
Fuck all of yah! I'm keeping this money. Same afternoon I visited the school library with the intension of writing the code using the help of YouTube tutorials. I didn't find anything useful for qbasic as I thought I could write a full fledged school management system using qbasic.

I was lucky enough to find an existing source code on Codeproject, God bless that Indian guy. The source was in PHP and the tutor gave a step by step guide to setup XAMP and MySQL. I really don't know PHP but I guess source code modification is a natural skill to all programmers as I was able to modify the code to meet the requirements of the students (i.e school name, logo and other minor changes).

Most of what I learnt in programming came from modifying the source of that project. I learnt how to connect a PHP source to a MySQL database, I learnt about functions and their usage, I learnt the basics of HTML, I really learnt a lot and I would say that the speed at which I learnt was proportional to the amount of pressure I received to deliver.

That was how my journey as a full stack developer started. By chance maybe.

My uncle was a programmer. My whole extended family lived very close together, so I saw him almost every weekend. He would tell me tall tales about the war between corporations and open source. I started hating all things Microsoft and advocating for Linux. For my 12th birthday, he gave me a computer he had recently fixed. Of course, it had Ubuntu Linux.

That's when he started teaching me the basics: Bash, Lisp, and C. I know some of you are tired of the cliche "I started coding at 12 and built my first OS at 16," but of course that's not reality. I really just wrote simple math formulas like chicarronera^[1] for my homework, a super simple text-input videogame, and a button-filled GUI. That's nothing compared to what I do now, so I won't dare put that into my resume. But it did give me an advantage over my peers, and by the time I had to self-learn web development for my job, my uncle had already given me all of these tools.

[1] Spanish slang for the quadratic equation. Literally means "street vendor who sells chicharron". The formula is taught so fierce in school that even street vendors must know it.

I was limited to how much time a day I could play video games, but I was told that if I made my own games I could play them as much as I wanted.

I took an HTML course on Codeacademy unaware that it had nothing to do with game dev and that's where it all started.

It was our first computer. probably it was 2008. I was super stupid back then. One day I saw a text file in our desktop, which says, "Hey $username, how are you? Message me here I-forgot-his-email@yahoo.com"
No matter how much we delete the text file, it kept on recreating and keep on adding same texts with multiple lines. I was really annoyed!

Yahoo messenger was popular back then. So I messaged the person using Yahoo messenger and he replied. Our conversation went this way:
Me: (after explaining a bit about the text file) what is this?
Him: it is a virus
Me: how do I delete this?
Him: if I teach you how to delete it, the whole purpose of creating it would be in vain
Me: okay, how do I create something like this?
Him: just Google

That day I was swearing at him from the bottom of my heart, not through messenger, but from my mind, because he didn't teach me how he made that virus.

I was like, "I will show you ***** that even I can make a virus better than that". So, I started googling & started learning how to make these scripts. The more I learned, the more it blew my mind. I was creating simple stuffs like, opening/closing CD rom every 5 seconds. It was so fun back then. Cause, my friends had no clue why their CD roms kept opening every 5 seconds.

After a few days, I started to thank the virus creator from the bottom of my heart. Cause, if he taught me how to create THAT virus that day, I probably would've just learned THAT one thing and stopped. But because he didn't teach me that, to learn one thing, I got to learn more than that one thing, which I'm really thankful for.

And then the journey started. Learned Batch, VBscript, C, C++, Java and so on. And still learning new things everyday...

Well I slapped some text into a file and it screamed at me.

Slapped some more text into another file and it didn’t scream at me.

I then watched videos and read books that detailed the slapping of text into files.

Tldr I kinda just taught myself somehow

Little me sees Monitor.
Monitor depicts Things.
Box make beep boop.

"Cool! But why?"

That's basically it.

Got my first laptop while I was overseas.

It was a windows hp laptop with Vista.

It was an absolute piece of shit.

Decided to find the people responsible of it.

Got to what a software engineer was.

Boss told me to look in the library to see if i find some books on the subject. Got a Java and C++ book.

Shit was hard af cuz I had no clue what I was doing, but I liked it. Decided to look more into an application wise platform of study rather than doing basic CLI shit. Got into web development with Java. Got a hold of more JS. Liked JS more cuz shit was easy, found about server side JS with classic ASP, did VBScript as well.

Eventually found Python, fell in love but hated the whitespace ussage for block level code etc. Found Ruby, to this day the most beautiful language according to me. Read about why's poignant intro to Ruby.

Dug it, but wanted some other things. Found out about the study of data structures ans algorithms, then harvard's free cs50 course, then mit courseware, rice's python class. Took all of them. CS50 introduced php, liked it, sounded like a drug, was easy to use, for whatever fucking reaskn my ass decided to use version 4 even though 5 was already out. Learned to appreciate advancements in programming language even more

Hipster phase, while studying php got more into JS and web design with more css concepts, wanted my shit to be pretty. Somehow landed with Common Lisp. Mind fucking blown.

Continued with php. Got into uni, math made sense through programming, ok so I am stupid, but not that stupid, python is the best calculator ever.

bring it bitches.

Graduated.

Still don't know what I am doing.

!rant
School and college introduced me to programming.
Personal perseverance and an excellent group of friends made me better at it.

I was paying GTA Vice City when i was in high school and wanted to make a game

I started learning Graphics, Video Editing, 3D and Coding for that

One thing led to another, now I'm a Frontend Lead

One day i type hello world program.
And i was amazed that for the first time someone (something) is doing what i tell it to do.
And that's how i got interest in programming.

>Get java "From zero to hero" book at the age of 12
>Follow along and despair at all the java jargon
>write small programs for fun
>ff to 14yo
>Get my first android phone (galaxy S3)
>Get android 4.0 book
>Follow along and despair at all the android jargon
>Develop small apps for fun
>Learn Java, C and python for the rest of high school
>discover functional programming (erlang/elixir) towards the end of highschool
>love_at_first_sight.jpg
>Learn said language
>Find first job and current job right after that
>happy

I started with C#at the age of 12, it was way too complicated and I learned Lua for Computer craft instead. Next I learned Ruby for RPG Maker and finally Javascript for web Dev stuff.
Now comfortable enought with Javascript but put off by its quirks I learned Java for compiling faulty minecraft mods, but I only fully learned it in school.
At the same time I learned python and quite liked it for scripting, but ultimately it was not a good match for my projects.
Disapointed with Java I returned to C# and liked it quite a lot, but started learning C++. After touching my first Microcontroller I learned C and I've stuck with it as my favorite language.
Along the way I picked up Kotlin, in case I need to do some Java shit. Much better.
But how did I come to an understanding of programming. Well I got better after each time I got a layer deeper until I hit silicon.
I had tinkered with electronics since I was 15 so I just had to study some boolean mathematics in school and some vintage computers architecture and instruction sets and...
Then I finally understood how that shit I wrote in Lua way back when was actually executed by my hardware.

Allways dig deeper and you'll find enlightenment eventually.

School's intro to computers, when I was 12, was the formal beginning. But I think the real start was before then; learning how to give people an order/direction they can't possibly fuck up.

wk257 - How did you learn to program?

GTA San Andreas Multiplayer Mod (SAMP), when I was maybe 14. Then some Java in high school. Studied Engineering and the only thing that didn't completely suck was programming (C), so I changed my field to work as a dev.

Taught myself assembler at 13 (this was the mid 1980s) and wondered how the hell people could stand to do this. Then I found out there were more abstract languages like BASIC or COBOL. So I taught myself BASIC and MS-DOS batch scripting. Various other languages came later (PROLOG, Pascal, C, Smalltalk, C++, VisualBasic, etc). But it’s never been easy for me because I suck at math and complicated logic structures. Especially not good with OOP. My brain was ruined by learning procedural coding first. It refuses to incorporate OOP.

Wrote my first programs on my Commodore C64.
First program was a number guessing game where you needed to guess a number between 1 and 100. Shit had 300+ lines because I only new the if clause and the equals comparison.
I was 9.

Later a friend showed me Modula 2 and I was instantly in love with that language.

Real programming then in school (C, C++, µC assembler).

Here comes lots of random pieces of advice...

Ain't no shortcuts.

Be prepared, becoming a good programmer (there are lots of shitty programmers, not so many good ones) takes lots of pain, frustration, and failure. It's going to suck for awhile. There will be false starts. At some point you will question whether you are cut out for it or not. Embrace the struggle -- if you aren't failing, you aren't learning.

Remember that in 2021 being a programmer is just as much (maybe even moreso) about picking up new things on the fly as it is about your crystalized knowledge. I don't want someone who has all the core features of some language memorized, I want someone who can learn new things quickly. Everything is open book all the time. I have to look up pretty basic stuff all the time, it's just that it takes me like twelve seconds to look it up and digest it.

Build, build, build, build, build. At least while you are learning, you should always be working on a project. Don't worry about how big the project is, small is fine.

Remember that programming is a tool, not the end goal in and of itself. Nobody gives a shit how good a carpenter is at using some specialized saw, they care about what the carpenter can build with that specialized saw.

Plan your build. This is a VERY important part of the process that newer devs/programmers like to skip. You are always free to change the plan, but you should have a plan going on. Don't store your plan in your head. If you plan exists only in your head you are doing it wrong. Write that shit down! If you create a solid development process, the cognitive overhead for any project goes way down.

Don't fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others, especially to the experts you are learning from. They are good because they have done the thing that you are struggling with at least a thousand times.

Don't fall into the trap of comparing yourself today to yourself yesterday. This will make it seem like you haven't learned anything and aren't on the move. Compare yourself to yourself last week, last month, last year.

Have experienced programmers review your code. Don't be afraid to ask, most of us really really enjoy this (if it makes you feel any better about the "inconvenience", it will take a mid-level waaaaay less time to review your code that it took for you to write it, and a senior dev even less time than that). You will hate it, it will suck having someone seem like they are just ripping your code apart, but it will make you so much better so much faster than just relying on your own internal knowledge.

When you start to be able to put the pieces together, stay humble. I've seen countless devs with a year of experience start to get a big head and talk like they know shit. Don't keep your mouth closed, but as a newer dev if you are talking noise instead of asking questions there is no way I will think you are ready to have the Jr./Associate/Whatever removed from your title.

Don't ever. Ever. Ever. Criticize someone else's preferred tools. Tooling is so far down the list of what makes a good programmer. This is another thing newer devs have a tendency to do, thinking that their tool chain is the only way to do it. Definitely recommend to people alternatives to check out. A senior dev using Notepad++, a terminal window, and a compiler from 1977 is probably better than you are with the newest shiniest IDE.

Don't be a dick about terminology/vocabulary. Different words mean different things to different people in different organizations. If what you call GNU/Linux somebody else just calls Linux, let it go man! You understand what they mean, and if you don't it's your job to figure out what they mean, not tell them the right way to say it.

One analogy I like to make is that becoming a programmer is a lot like becoming a chef. You don't become a chef by following recipes (i.e. just following tutorials and walk-throughs). You become a chef by learning about different ingredients, learning about different cooking techniques, learning about different styles of cuisine, and (this is the important part), learning how to put together ingredients, techniques, and cuisines in ways that no one has ever showed you about before.

First thought about programming was in forth class in school, I was 10, and together with a friend we where planing on building a robot.

When we had a basic Idea on how the mechanics would work (theoretically but maybe not really practically sound) we started to consider how to control it. We had heard about computers but had never seen one but we figured out you could not just say, “go shopping” but rather had to break the problem down and doing that we came to the conclusion we would have to start with getting it to take a step.

We never got further as my family moved and I switched schools.

Later the same year I got to play with an actual computer, the Sinclair ZX80, 80 for the year.

A monster with 512 bytes of internal memory ... yes bytes, not kbyte.

And then things got going, after a few curses in Basic I finally got my own Spectra video 128, 14 years old and 2 years later I was teaching basic in ravening classes and I have been working with computers and programming ever since.

I liked to toy with and edit stupid batch scripts in high school and put them on school computers to see if kids run them

Lucked into an internship that was structured enough to learn but laid back enough to have freedom to learn on my own my way. And it included programming
Semester after had a python elective. Was ahead of everyone due to my internship so teacher let me do what I want to if I help other students so I just experimented with stuff

Few months after high school I dropped out of one college after a gap year I ended up in an associates in programming program at another college. Graduated July 2020

I feel I'm doing alright for myself most of the time

I’m one of those who learned in adulthood. I had lost track of my life and tried to find something to grasp on to. I found inspiration from two friends I have. One who’s been a very gifted software engineer since his early years, and the other who one day unexpectedly turned to university and computer science and started a good work life right away after the studies. After failing miserably at my previous attempt at university I decided to jump ship and give CS a try. It was the best decision of my life. To my surprise programming very much matched many of my personality traits and how I think and make desicions in games and everyday life. After my first few lectures It all came very intuitively to me. Then thruout most of my education (and this is one of my less ”grown up” thoughts) it felt as though I could as well have been a student at Hogwarts and my professors were witches and wizards. Anything was possible and each day we learned new tricks to create the unimaginable. That aside, I now work as a software engineer, but I feel as though the list of things left to learn is endless. I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning.

Can't fully remember. But I believe windows batch files.
I just didn't wanna sort/move my files by myself anymore and it all went downhill from there.

I didnt. Programming learned how to handle me.

My elementary IT teacher whom I owe all my enthusiasm to introduced me to MIT Scratch, and I found the concept of chaining dumb operations to accomplish tasks fascinating. Later I learned c++ which I hated vehemently for a couple months until it clicked. After that I studied C#, which I managed to use for over a year before realising what copy by reference actually means. With that realization my understanding of programming languages was essentially complete and since then I have only learned techniques and tricks and languages that add few new ideas, and I don't expect anything to fundamentally change my understanding of programming. All of that was 5 years ago BTW.

Past two years when I was in 7th grade, my computer teacher taught us the first programming language ie Python. At first, I just copied the syntax in my copy, and in the evening, I searched for it on YT

This introduced me to a new world of programming and I started learning it further

Just A BASIC book with some examples and a old Radio Shack Tandy computer (with the TV as monitor). A zillion years ago.

So, it was kinda a reversed effect?
My parents didn't give me access to computer for a long time, the only option was to play games with my dad. I also didn't have a phone for a quite long. And, when I see what is happening today with the kids that get their first own phone/tablet at age of 4, I am really happy about it.
But, somehow, that made me really interested in what runs all the squares on the screen etc. When I convinced my parents to give me my first laptop — to play Minecraft with classmates — almost the first thing I did after installing the game was searching "how to make a website". I played with some shitty builders, then I discovered HTML (which was :o for me then). Small steps into PHP, then some JS. I really enjoyed it, but PHP gave me headache each time I wrote something bigger (I was writing a super spaghetti code then, I was inexperienced), so I thought of trying something else...
Minecraft plugins!
I fallen in love with Java.
And after that the real journey began.

My (younger) brother used to be way better than me at programming. He was making all this cool stuff (mainly Arduino).

I learned to program to make cool stuff like him basically. I learned Python to start since someone told me it would be easier to start with (it was).

I made a bunch of small programs (shitty things to help with homework, text based game, etc).

Eventually took programming classes in university.

Now I do C++ for a living.

Sick of manually punching holes in punchcards, moved to microcode on the mighty DEC PDP-11...time for my nap.

Had my first programming encounter when I was 12 at school with Turbo Pascal and VB, I was the best in my class but didn't really got struck by it.

It wasn't until I was 19 that I discovered Arduino and Processing, started learning C++ and Java and decided to switch from Electronic Engineering to Computer Engineering.

Since I was into music and used to make guitar pedals, the first things I programmed were a bunch of audio effects with Pure Data and some controllers with Arduino since I wanted to make a digital pedal with a raspberry, but as usual I never completed it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Was in awe for the democratic potential of the worldwide web, and wanted to help realizing it. I was blind to its corporate potential back then.

Before I went to school I was copying game code from book to atari computer cause it was faster than waiting for game to load from tape recorder ( especially when people are walking around on wood floor and you have constant read errors).

I probably wrote some magic spell that cursed me on my lifetime cause this shitty programming happened to chase me everywhere I go.

Damn you software you’re everywhere I go, why you’re haunting me all the time. It’s hard to find some quiet place without you watching.

So remember kids don’t write code you don’t understand cause it may fuck your life.

Taught myself at the ripe old age of 6 years old in 1989 - Got a Turbo Pascal 3 book and an XT running some ancient version of DOS.

My mum signed me up for a robotics workshop with Lego mindstorms... i kept going to these workshops, doing some of them multiple times. At some point we went from graphical programming to some other kids language, than we made a robocup junior team from the kids who were like me and kept on showing up at these workshops and used arduino and C. Had a break for a year or so from coding so I could finish school, then I went studying computer science at Uni. And the rest is history.

My first introductions to programming was in Garry's mod.
There'e a mod called wiremod, which added logic gates, buttons, and other entities that manipulated the game with input/output. And on top of that a little scripting language they called Expression 2.

Me and some friends would code stupid things in Expression all day to use in the game.
I wasn't too good at it, but I had fun. Shortly after I started going to a high school with a computer science focus, and had 2 years of proper education in C#.

Curiosity as a kid with Visual Basic. Then university courses with Java and learning C++ on the side. And started the self learning journey from there. I never touch those 3 first languages anymore.

I wanted to create my own Minecraft Beta 1.4 Mod and failed, this constructor stuff was to complicated for me.

So I went to the University to learn Java and ended up by learning it myself, with a lot of help form other students who are way smarter than I am.

THENEWBOSTON

I used to write games on my parents old zx spectrum. I never did end up going into the games industry, but it taught me BASIC and later C++

I had this amazing friend during my Bachelors and I think because of her I started to learn programming.

Long story short, IT(not just IT though) curriculum in India is shit. So you do not really get to learn during your college. It’s completely on you and how you self teach. This friend who I am talking about not just learnt all this and did research for herself, but she tried to teach and make others aware as well. She organised DjangoGirls workshop in our city where I participated. That’s when I really started learning stuff useful in real world.

JEE. It's a tangled mess. I have no clue how to learn it, so I still don't get it.

My mom was a media designer and as a kid I liked watching her doing stuff with CorelDRAW. And as soon as she played Sims in the evenings I really wanted to learn how to make a window and stuff in it happen.

So I started learning C, because my stepdad had a book laying around. (He did not know how to code by the way, now I'm asking myself why we even had this book)
But never got further than a few console applictions asking for input, messing with it and printing something.
Later I got into HTML/CSS/JavaScript (in that order over a course of a good 3 years or so) because I wanted to do stuff people can see and easily reach (an exe wasn't the nicest way of showing people something imo)

And that's when I totally fell in love with JS and it never stopped from then.:D

I did a few excurses to C++, Java, VB, C#, such kinda stuff and learned many many things about how stuff actually works. C being my very first language immensely helped with that.

I'm also trying some game development, as this was one of the main reasons I started coding, but I'm not creative enough and do it less and less.

Nowadays I do HTML, CSS, JS, TS and PHP for a living and I love it.:D

My dad showed me vb.net when I was 13 or something and just went ahead to try to make different types of games with Windows forms, it was a lot of fun even if the games were garbage(I had a gazillion buttons on one because I couldn't figure out how to make the logic reusable with the hp bar); it is what put me on the programmer/engineering path

I learned to code on a jailbroken iPod touch around 2009. I wanted to compile some random project for jailbroken devices, but I had a windows comp (with dialup!!!), so I was like "why not do it on the iPod itself?". I didn't even have wifi, so I'd sneak out of my parents' house at night and steal the neighbor's (hey, I was 11 w/ overprotective parents who would freak out if I occupied the phone line w/ internet) to go read up on compilers, jailbreaking, etc etc. Eventually I got a working compiler and toolchain, but when I went to compile the project I wanted to use (and not just a test project that I found), it spat out errors. So I learned C/ObjC on my iPod. Turned out the project I was trying to compile was a load of BS, so I implemented my own version and put it on github. From a fuckin iPod. Win. It was some SBSettings control. Once upon a time, you had to jailbreak to get those cool slide up/down menus with the toggles for wifi, bluetooth, location, etc!!!

In the old days of Internet Explorer 6, Html 4 and bad gifs I decided to understand the meaning of an obscure (to me) file extension: html.

I was about 11. Soon transitioned to PHP, and fell into the rabbit hole of computer science.

Learned almost entirely from online tutorials, and this was starting 12+ years ago.

What little official education I had was barely any practical programming.

I started with html and php with xampp, with the selfhtml in a packaged version.
After this came a language called Lite-C (basically a gaming engine with some stuff abstracted).
After that came again a phase with php/html with some of these small free hosters.
After that my IT specialist training started and i switched to python and now im into golang.

I started with a free trial of neobook (anyone remember that?), and then moved on to MS SmallBasic. At some point I had discovered Roblox and was stuck with that and lua for a few years. Eventually I started learning C# from a course, but never really used it much so I kinda forgot it.

School got a lot more busy for me and so I wasn't really able to do much programming for a few years, and even when I did, it was mostly bash and docker stuff. Then in the beginning of last year, I was able to start learning Go, which is now my current language of choice.

Found a little magazine when I was 12 which talked about HTML.
Then later, a friend talked about VBS and VB.NET and I just started making prank shit in that...
Then later back to making websites and basically just grew from there really...

Only followed a formal education on programming once... Which I got kicked out off because I ended my first year with a splendid 2 (that 1 point for adequate attendance).
The fun part? I failed because I was too good :^)
All my grades where a 1 or a 2 because my code was made using tools and libraries that they didn't want me to touch or even know about until 3rd of 4th year...
So yea, I failed everything with the reason being: "Not according to the exercise".

Another fun part: We had to make a personal blog in the 1st year using the techniques we had learned.
Sites were published on a *public* server...
Someone hacked all sites... except mine :^)

!rant

I personally a book worm I read books from goalkicker.com , I started programme for Android application in Java.

I was put into pair programming for writing code in BASIC in my 5th grade. I did all the exercises while my pair simply watched. It was simply natural to me, and a bug in code helped me to print my name in a infinite loop. Amazed with what computers can do, and my story with computer and software development started there.

We had to choose a workshop class for middle school and I chose computing because I was already familiar with all the components, but the last year we learned QuickBasic so that's where I learned programming logic. Later in highschool we had a bit of Visual Basic and HTML. Then learned some C and Java in college.

The truth is that I never learned any language in-depth and I've been winging it with the basics for longer than I should. A good understanding of loops and control flow lets you get away with a lot of things.

Took an intro to python course to learn the basics. Then did side project after side project after side project to learn more by myself

udemy.com/java-tutorial
I had some very minimal experience with Arduino and Zelio, so I guess I had the basic notions in the back of my mind, but this is where it all begun.
I was asked if I wanted to learn how to code because they needed a developer, so I chose Java because I liked Minecraft and I thought that if I failed, at least I could code some mods.
Spoiler alert: I didn't fail so I didn't have time to code mods... is it really not have failed?

I got a 'programming for kids' book for birthday.
Anyone else who used BlitzBasic?

By trying out everything, and starting projects but never finishing any of them.
And talking about coding in dev forums. (Yes, this was before SO and reddit)

The thirst for revenge got me to learn Batch, making fancy CLI programs. It wasn't until I got into Web Dev with self-directed lessons to learn HTML4, CSS2 and JS ES4 where I started programming more and more.
And apart from the high school course and uni it was mostly self-direction that got me to know how to program and code.

I took IT as a choice subject in high school, found that I quite like this whole programming thing

The most fun thing in boring online class is when someone accidentally switch on mic and speak things unknowingly🤣🤣🤣... It will wake the class for atleast some minutes😂

Salesforce 2GP packaging is crappy and the version control is a mess *smh*