How did I learn how to program?

I didn't. I'm still learning ☺.

We will never be done learning.

That's the beauty of it all.

I never did.

Wanted to build apps. Every dev laughed at my ideas. So I became a dev and now laugh at my ideas

I had two optios at highschoool:
1. Hang ouy with other teens, aquire social skills and get girls.
2. Learn to code.

My dad put parental controls on the wifi password, programmed a key logger to get the password.

Hooked ever since

(6 years ago)

while(true) {
googleSomething();
try {
develop();
} catch(Exception e) {
stackOverFlow(e);
}
}

Youtube, codecademy, w3schools, stackoverflow, etc.

Started with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript until WordPress introduced me to PHP. It was hate at first sight.

I skipped class in high school and went to the library where I tought myself C++.

Because code was marginally funner than history class.

FUC*ED .... An expression when you accidentally drop a database on your first day of job.

I bragged at my Friends that I already knew it, so I had to actually learn it because I was afraid they found Out that I lied

Growing up in a small village with no friends...

To cut a long story short... My parents said not to touch the computer :)

One day, I woke up and just knew how.

I played a lot of Command & Conquer when I was younger, and I remember going through the files for C&C: Red Alert. I found one that had all the units names and properties, and wondered what happened if I changed a value. So I changed grenadiers attack speed to something ridiculously fast, and found that it actually changed it in the game!

The light bulb went off in my head, and I then created new units:
- Albert Einstein that shot electricity
- Attack dogs that launched missiles

Granted the animations didn't exist for these so it defaulted to playing their death animations when attacking, which was amusing.

That was the ah-ha moment for me that lead me to pursue programming. It was just so much fun!

I loved the idea of making computers do the dirty job for me.

Jokes on me, I learned I had to do dirty job for them to do the dirty job for me.

I was once at my uncle's 40th birthday party and bored to hell, so he gave me a book that was supposed to be "Python for kids". I started reading it and soon fell in love with programming.
Since then I've often learned new programming languages by reading books or lately mostly the internet.
My books here should be in chronological order:

How did I learn to program?
It's the funniest story actually.
I studied Computer Engineering where I took programming courses.

I watched a YouTube video on coding and read dev rant. Pretty much full stack.

I knew nothing about programming then i came across this amazing chilled out teacher who taught me cpp literally through jokes and puns and here I am still learning the best thing I've came so far

PROGRAMMING

P.S. Here is a meme to show what my mates think when i fix stuff up

At university. But at first I thought I was too stupid because everyone in my class sounded like they started hacking the NSA at age 3, and I hadn't even opened a command line. Even had a proffessor tell me if I didn't ace his OOP class, I should quit (I failed, did good the second time though). Moral of the story is: fuck him, and anyone who tells you that you can't do something.

I was looking for a part time job when I was 15, knew nothing about coding, got a developer job cause I said I'm keen to learn xD .. 5 years later.. I'm still learning but I have a better knowledge now!

Learning 10 languages
Practicing 6
Understanding 2
Using 1

I learnt programming by making cheats for games and reverse engineering them. It was a fun experience as it wasn't always easy to start with C++ and assembly but it was definitely worth it. Though when you come from a low level language such as C++, looking at highly abstract languages such as Javascript makes everything feel wrong in Javascript, especially when it comes to types and how you can just switch types in the middle of the code :D. But it also gives you an understanding of how Javascript could be implemented, what the engine is doing in the background when you create an object etc..

Like everyone else - I made an awful text adventure that nobody wants to play.

I learn programming cause it was in my genes.

My father was a programmer himself but, he died back in 2005 of September when I was 5 years old. So I guess I program to continue what he did. He was in the process of making a game but, failed to do it. He had concept art created and even mad characters. When I get real good, I plan to program that game for him and dedicate it to him.

I started programming on a website called Scratch back in 2010 (in think), which I saw a Ted Talk on, and started from there. I use KhanAcademy as I am home schooled and when they introduced the programming tutorials to that website, I was immediately hooked and it was just the beginning.
I used Scratch for three years and I wanted to know more, so I did research and discovered a program called Stencyl and started making a game I made from scratch into that format.

I used that program and when 2013 hit, moved to a new church and met an old friend and all of sudden we started making games together and we relesed our first game on Scratch called Minecart Chaos.
That took three months to create. He did all the art and I, of course, did the programming. The three months later we were at it again making a new game called EMP Restaurant Rampage. That also took three months to create. one of his friends composed the music. We are now in the process on making a new game and I am now tasked to make the music. So that is my history.

I've never learned how to program : I'm still learning.

Even if it's said 5 years of experience on my resume, I feel like I'll be a never-ending student.

Three years ago, tried to learn some JavaScript, failed miserably. Two years ago, managed to learn some Java through Udacity courses. Last year I started learning native Android development and got my first coding summer job. Now I'm back to learning JavaScript through Freecodecamp and that bitch ain't got shit on me no more!

When I was 17 years old. I had difficulties in understanding math problem “Calculus” (I can’t remember which one was it). This one day when we were in a Computer Lab, our teacher was showing us how really software’s are made. During my time, it was vb6. I paid close attention. When I went home, I started to think things that I can make using that software so one day I went to my teacher and asked if I can have a copy of the vb6. He gave vb6 and told me that inside are few eBooks that will help in learning.

Fuck School, from that day I started to concentrate on programming only. Made a small calculator which will help me to understand a Calculus problem and double check my answer. From that day, I love programming.

I’ m 26 now and a full stack software developer. All I want to do it build cool shit, something that will blow the eyeball of my friends and that eyeball should pop out from their asshole.

Joke: The person who scored highest in the computer class was afraid to switch on the PC.

I wrote a VBA script for a manufacturing plant. It made a quote, ran a nesting program, generated a dwg file, placed tool paths, created the work order and material part count, and finally out put to the cnc machine. It worked great it reduced a 10hr process to about 20min. So they cut my hours to less than 20 a week. I quit on "Bosses Day" to start my own company.

Well I met my wife and decided my current profession wasn't going to give us the life I wanted for us. So since I did IT communications in the Army, I decided to look into that field, buy I knew I didn't want to do networking; I hated it in the Army. I read about programming I saw that I could learn some for free online before I chose that as a career. I did the website courses on Codacademy and thought it was a lot of fun! So I enrolled in It's software program, got 1 quarter away from an AAS in software development, then while I was on my honeymoon, they shut all the schools down and filed bankruptcy. Now I've started all over and community college to eventually get a BA in computer science.

I guess I could say back to the old LOGO turtle days, but it wasn't until university that I began using the good turbo c compiler and it's DOS platform

Since I were born in the year 2048 I were still young when it happen, we then had AIs to create our programs from very vague requirements and my father were researching how to resolve conflicting requirement when a mistake happen. The requirement on Asimov law were down prioritized!
The rest is history so to say, human race decimated in a day, I got sent back in time to hinder the development on AIs and so on, so if you had a bug in your AI it’s a good chance it’s because of me

I was an oilfield machinist for about 10 years. During downtime I'd read blogs and books on my phone. Eventually I wrote an app to manage parts drawings and CNC programs for my shop. Any time I came across a package or pattern I didn't understand I'd pursue it relentlessly. CodeWars and reading other people's code got me a long way. Now I've got a job in silicon valley and things are pretty sweet.

Tried to create my own forum. Discovered phpBB exists mid way.

I created an artificial intelligence using a scripting language.

Scripting and automation is my passion.

So....I would say laziness got me hooked into this world. :-D

newboston was my first teacher

My dad is in IT, and when I was younger he realised I had the same logical/analytical skill set as him so had me enrolled in a Lego robotics course and I loved it so I taught myself to code from online tutorials and books!

I started accidentally. My (first) boss asked me if I knew MS Access. I bluff and said yes, of course.
Then one time I needed a somewhat more advanced macro and started with VBA. My addiction began to grow.

After that I discovered VB.NET
Began programming with AutoCAD. Switched to C#.
Did some HTML CSS JS on the way.
No I'm a C# AutoCAD developer.

All of this started with a little bluff 8years ago

I actually suck at programming, but I like creating software. I hope for a management career

Im still not convinced i know how to code so i guess im still learning?

------------Weeklyrant-------------------------------------
So I bought a smart watch to go with my Samsung Galaxy back when I was 12, and upon inspecting the watchface maker app I came across lua scripting files. This amazed me. Animations, complex math, hexadecimal color system, variables, sensors...
I spent about four months
learning/experimenting with lua until I discovered arduino and C++.

I am now 14 and have been fascinated with robotics and learned java and dos since.

thenewboston ♥

I got kicked out of university (geology) because my credits ran out. I just wanted to choose the course with highest employment rate, so i chose applied computer sciences at college. Without any experience with computers i started it!
Boy was that the right descicion!
Now i'm really loving it!

At 9, I wanted to create a video game, I learned how to use RPG Maker, then Ruby with RGSS then C, then HTML, CSS... And now I'm here, 9 years later :p

I defied my HelpDesk technicians by buying my own mouse and a keyboard.

Vanilla generic peripherals seem to prevent me from expressing my creativity.

I learned to code through constantly reading anything i could find, until i knew just enough to make and abandon 80+ hobby projects before finally ever finishing one.

I started programing when I almost failed at some IT class 7 years ago when I was 16 in high school. So I started googling how to do basic stuff in java (if, for, while,... ) and I just fall in love with it 😊 I still remember how I wanted to make a button in Java so I googled: how to button in java 😂
Here I am still in love with it and I think I will always have this need to learn new programming languages, technologies, frameworks,... 😊🤓

I <3 python

Trying to get around paying for premium porn

How I learnt to Program!!!
Went for a University Project recruitment Interview in my 2nd year.
Senior: Which domain you wanna join?
Me: (as I was from software engineering Dept.) Coding domain.
Senior: Pointed to a table where 5-8 students were solving a coding question paper.
Me: (saw the questions and went blank. The questions were so tough, like check a number is even or odd.)I don't know anything in the paper.
Senior: why are you here then?
Me: (with full determination to join the project) Give me 2 weeks time, and I will learn all of it. (Didn't know learning all was never gonna possible, but that's how I started learning programming)
P.S. Yes, I got into the Project and was leading the Coding domain after an year.

I've always been pretty tech savvy, but I never actually started coding till January in a beginner programming class. It's been almost a year and I've loved every step of the way :)

w3schools around the age of 15. The rest I learned through my study and from friends (learned NodeJS from a friend for example)

Somewhere in my early teens, I started playing with macro scripts in Microsoft Word or Excel. After that I tried my hand at creating a full-on VB app. After creating several of those I tried Python, C++, then HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Short story: My first distributed program was what I used to get my first girlfriend: A program that told her all the things I was too shy to say and ask the things I was too afraid to ask... Including "will you be my girlfriend?" Fun times 😄

Got a 4 yr degree and a mountain of debt

10 PRINT "Mommy is crazy"
20 GOTO 10

I learned how to program during my MSc at UC Santa Barbara in 1988. But the real thing happened during my first job as software engineer at Chorus Systems, in Paris, with the guidance of some of the world's best mentors, Russian engineers who taught me how to approach code design as if it was playing chess. These guys were brilliant!

Learned HTML with a 50ct book from a 1 €-shop. Got interested in forums and learned PHP by analyzing phpBB and Itschi (you probably don't know the latter). Learned Java through school though it was only the basics. Now I'm a full stack developer at a Norwegian company. Fully self-taught.

My family keeps telling me the same old story over and over again about me when I was 3 years old, holding a Gameboy in my hands, cheering each time Mario died (due to the failure theme I'd guess, didn't have any other sadistic tendencies though). Over the years my gaming ambitions became a little more purposeful. ;)

However it's not surprising that I started thinking about how games are developed and how I can start my own.

So when I was around 14 I went to the local library and borrowed the first game development book striking my eye.. unfortunately it was about Delphi. But hey, I was young and naive.

Surprisingly, I didn't surrender back then.. but to be honest, I do not recall one line of Delphi. :D

A course at university made us program a chat server and client with Java RPC (in the days where there was no such thing as stack overflow), without ever teaching us anything about coding.

The grading was based on unit tests executed on a Server the university provided.
The server was down or overloaded most of the time and one could only try to deploy at most 3 times...
There were heuristics in place to find duplicate solutions.

... I have to say, that course took me from "hello world" to developer within a couple of months. Thanks assholes!! :D

I'm still learning and I'll continue to do so throughout my whole carreer.

I started when I was 14, 6 years ago, and I was trying to create my "google chrome" in VB.net (yep, a browser)... Fortunately after that newbie beginning, I started to study IT seriously at a technical school, and now I'm a student of IT engineering at university.

Sololearn and some random tutorials on the internet about Java and C#

Started studying physics at uni. Frist semester i had to take an introductional course to scientific programming in Python. Thought i would hate it. I was very wrong. Loved it. The next semester had no programming and the physics was so not what i expected. Dropped out and began studying computer science instead. Im now in my final year of my bachelore's degree, planning my master's.

Tl;dr was told I couldn't and found I like programming. :)

Went to some school for testing out different industries but didn't have any goal nor found anything I was really interested in..
So i was tested for qualifications and told I was too stupid to be in IT..
So I decided to prove them wrong, went for an it supporter ground course and aced it with top grades + extra courses..
But still had no goals or dreams.
On that education, I met a friend who wanted to be a web programmer, so I decided to walk that path and aced another education with top grades..
Then I found, that I actually sorta enjoy programming and doesn't get bored quickly so then, I decided to plant my flag and become a programmer :)

I started at a tiny Web firm as a front-end dev. I was OK at it at best. Only 6 months in to this part-time job (I was also a firearms instructor), the only backend developer left. I was then forced to pick up a book to learn ColdFusion 8. I had to finish a project for a multi billion company... even though I only knew basic queries and form submissions. At the end of the project I learned so much... I went back to pages that I knew were terrible and refactored them. Since there are so fresh CF developers I was able to get contract positions in many places. Over 6 months later I now work for one of the largest development companies in the states.

My first school as a kid learned me how to build websites. Then highschool got me to the point where I really liked it and I selftaught making android apps at home. Now I'm in college and I actually learn how to do it.

I've started at school, but thinking about it since I were a child (10/11 YO) thanks to Crash Bandicoot!!
Damn, I've loved that game! And since then, I've dreamed about becoming a"videogame programmer", then I've found out that developing it's funny too, so for the moment I develop every time I can, one day I'll do my course to become a gameDev :D

YouTube tutorials then enough patience to read docs.

A taste in college with punchcards but mostly on Commodore 64 and IBM 5050 using BASIC and dBASE II. Automated my company from paper to systems and developed many side projects. Still creating 😀

My mom was a data analyst in the Army when I was a kid. At around 10 I remember her teaching me batch scripting. Just seeing code and working with the machine was amazing to me and since then I've tried to learn all I could.

I spent a long time not doing this kind of work and finally in the last few years decided to follow that passion. So for me 20 years of my own private passion has turned into a skilled and profitable career I wasn't expecting.

<meta-rant>
Kind of surprising to see how many people here learned to program while under 18 (like me) instead of from a traditional college. Curious if that affects anyone else's choice to go to college.
</meta-rant>

Started off in College learning the basic Java and C#. That was enough to land my first internship, during that internship I'd go home each night and teach myself whatever I needed to know to get through the next day.

Within a year I became the project lead on an API for my groups application.

1. Fake it till you make it.
2. Act like you've been there before.
3. Never stop learning.

I started reading this when I was like 6.

There was a lesson in HTML during high school... had to learn C++ in Uni because it is part of my curriculum in my business major. They all mattered when I got into programming 2 years ago because my current boss thought I can be a good programmer despite being not an IT graduate... so he told me to self-study

My dream till I die is to be a programmer!! I'm still learning...

My dad bought the insanely freaky Commodore Plus/4 which should be a more "business"-oriented version of the 64. Of course the two machines were incomatible so none of the 64 games worked on the Plus/4, so there were not much options left but to start hacking into it, first in Basic and then machinecode.

Needed a new website for my business, so learned how to build one

Was a PC repair guy. A wealthy man saw that I have potential, asked me to build a website. I started learning how to code. Frustrated, quit the job, and bummed off for weeks. Started fresh, like magic, everything seemed easier without the pressure. Freelanced for a few years, now at a media company, as an XD.

My gradnfather died, and basically i got all the garbage books about programming. I was 9 by the time. Now im 13, and i still dont know how to code...

I decided i wanna, so i learned C, then i realized OOP was a thing so i had some fun with Java and Android, then i realized Web was useful, and easier to make actual products so i had an affair with RoR, but it was confusing AF, then i got a job where i have to work mainly with Python and Django, but frontend was PITA and i hated it.
In the end, since im only dev at the company and had to do it i started to like it (stockholm syndrom much) and now Im Javascript dev trying to move our stack to Node...

No regrets!

Best source

I never wanted to be a programmer. I spent years in education being confused and bombarded by information that was poorly explained and made little to no sense.

Then in my final year after having a basic understanding of the building blocks, I just sent out to solve a problem >I< had.

It all just clicked into place and it turns out I had learned but perhaps didn't have an appreciation of how to apply it.

I'm guessing my education was too theoretical and not enough practical.

I got triggered by a friend who was quite the genius... He told me I couldn't, took a few years and now I can :)

Segmentation fault: core dumped

How I learned to program:

My father installed a DOS VM on my eMac when I was 7 and started learning in QBASIC. In my opinion, it's still one of the best ways to get started with programming due to its simplicity.

It all started with... Geocities.

Learnt C++ from Bucky, New Boston as my first.

Then went crazy afterwards on YouTube blog posts and Books

My older brother introduced me to linux and android custom roms when I was like 11. So I flashed my old sony Ericson phone with custom roms from xda and tried Ubuntu live CDs on my mother's old 40gb hdd laptop.
But my introduction to programming was when I saw some videos about the raspberry pi on YouTube.
I was like 14 and programmed basic scripts for my raspberry pi in nano over putty or notepad++.
At first I didn't even knew to intendent but in the process of my first project (Python sunrise alarm clock with tts) I learned many valuable things about Python and Linux/Debian.
The years after that I learned more with my now multiple RaspberryPIs, Arduinos and other hardware.
So in conclusion RaspberryPIs, the diy/open source community and especially my brother introduced me to programming.
I am now doing bigger projects with my brother and have (really basic) knowledge of java,Javascript,php,html,Arduino/C++ and Python.

Making cheat codes with cheat engine -> making games with game maker -> learning Python freshman year of high school -> ap computer science -> 75% of a computer engineering degree and 2 internships, soon to be 3!

I'm almost a programmer!

My Dad! He used to write private projects in Clipper an dBASE and was quite successful.

At the age of 10 I asked him why I couldn't play games (he was on the pc)... and he showed me then stuck the dBASE book in my hand and told me to design an inventory system for his garage...

That was the beginning

I just kinda taught myself through googling errors and building my own website...

Well... I was in a room, my computer was in a room. I was bored, so I just browsed around wikipedia. Then, baaam, suddenly i was at the page for programming. I read about and i was in love. It was love at first sight.

I worked with a guy who paid someone to build an app for him. I went home that night and started reading. Books, online tutorials, hackathon at what some consider the number one tech college in the country. Most of all, A LOT OF PEOPLE TELLING ME, NO!

Could say uni, or first job, or mentor...but I think what 'how I learned to program' boils down to is: trial and error

first time i learned to programme was, when i discovered the scripting window on macromedia flash 5

Well, i when I was 13 I thought that a bit extra knowledge before programming in school would be nice, so I bought a book about the basics of java. The books never mentioned the concept of an IDE, so I just used the windows editor and command lines.

And yes, you guessed right, the battles with the compiler were furious.

I taught myself C. I had a Commodor-64, and I bought a C compiler for it. My first project was a random character generator for the original D&D RPG. That was in 1985.

When I was 16yo, a teacher show us Hello World in .bat. Instant addict...

Towards the end of my art degree we were encouraged to setup portfolio sites. Most people used iWeb but I went to a DreamWeaver workshop and built mine and my girlfriend's.

Then I got into WordPress, read some good books and decided to pursue a career in it. Got my masters while working part time as a postman and my first job as a front end dev with a medium sized fintech.

I am partially self taught and partially book taught.

The self taught part involved viewing the source of websites and learning HTML that way.

The book part comes from when I worked at a .COM startup in their customer service dept while learning HTML. I mentioned it to the IT Director and he threw a ColdFusion book at me and told me to learn it and I could move to the IT dept. Needless to say, I haven't done customer service work since.

Went to college for 4 years learned very basics of everything. Started first job and just learned by doing, thank God for the Internet you can learn everything else you need from there.

Always interested in computers, started taking stuff apart, eventually found Linux, fell in love with that a bit and through command line learnt more.
Now finished a comp sci MSc and about to start a job. All I in know is there is a huge amount more to learn before I feel competent and confident. Excited about that though.

Back in the day my dad had this Fortran book he was studying at the time. I had just learned reading but and remember looking at the funny book and wondering why I can't understand anything. Still have that book as a fond reminder =D

My dad noticed me trying to read it and got me this funny BASIC for kids. At the same time we got our first computer. At that you couldn't buy games. Usually the books had the source that you had to type in and compile.

So this funny BASIC book with funny pictures had the source for moonlander... And man was I hooked. Next came the "monkeys throwing bananas" =D

Back in the day everyone was also on the dark side. Prompt was always white on black ;)

To be honest, me starting to code is just a moment when I suddenly decided that yeah, let's code. Then I learned HTML and Javascript, basically just bulldozing through whatever tutorials I can find before ending up choosing IT in university.

Start with a TI Basic program on ti 84 plus in schhol. The program was written by my math teacher an calculate within 10 step the square root from an number.
Then i start code my on programs and play a costum os on my ti. Years later start with java in computer science at school. Coding in java editor.

Boring one here but it was University. Always wished I started sooner. It would have been such an advantage.

I was bored so I learned HTML/CSS, I was like "eh, programming is easy!".
So I learned C next and I was like "eh, programming is kinda hard actually".
So I learned to program rather than learn a language, got back to C until I was comfortable with it.
Nothing is hard now :D

I was making games for fun in C++, learnt from random internet sites, then my other half said something like "you could probably make some money doing that".

I did.

Before my first year of college/university I started looking at various online resources such as Code academy as well as watching many YouTube videos that would help me understand the basic underlying concepts of programming

Took an extremely hard 3d course during my exchange. We started 40. 6 finished the course. The workload was big , but not difficult.

But I lost my virginity and then personal projects made me improve the skills 😊

In elementary school, when I got my first computer (a 286 with b/w monitor and a whopping 8mhz), I discovered that a .bat file was nothing more than a set of instructions.

So my first "programs" where nothing more than .bat files. Then, at summer camp, one of the instructors noticed I was kind of a nerd, so he introduced me to QBasic. Later on, a friend of my mother showed me Turbo Pascal 6.0. So I was already creating games when I left elementary school.

Then, on secondary school, I stopped most of my programming stuff and was mostly interested in drawing and making music.

But, on college I rediscovered programming with Flash, HTML, PHP and Director. This was around the time that AS2 and PHP4 were still cool.

Later on, in university, I became nerd full on, but still the main focus on web development.

I was always interested in computers. My dad was a big computer geek and a programmer to boot. Usually had a couple old PCs in the basement to play with.

In middle school, I took tech ed and we made simple web sites with html and css. I remember the struggle of nested tables.

In high school, I couldn't fit any CS into my schedule. But someone gave me a learning to code book in ruby. I loved it, and have been hooked ever since.

As for most, began with 'Hello World' in Qbasic.

When I was 12 i had a Friday afternoon course, as they called it, in QBasic. Nothing fancy but I learned that 'I wanted to work with computers'.
10 years later I got my first programming job. It was with the old Cognos Powerhouse language on OpenVMS. Does anyone remember that?
I had that job for 4 years and it took me another 10 (and several other IT jobs) before I started to learn Java, which I do now for 2 years.

That's my career story in a tiny nutshell 😎

I couldnt play games in lan at school, started using ubuntu, then everything escalated and now im pretty much programming or doing something on my computer related to that.

I want to hack central bank website.so I asked my teacher and he told me , go and learn q basic . then I bought programming with qbasic in 21 days....
Fuck that motherfucker teacher

Finding a lack of courses on Web development at my university (1996) I went out and bought my own HTML and JavaScript books. Then I used my employer's servers to set up three web servers and did a PR site for them. After that, I hung out a shingle and built sites for a private eye agency and an art gallery. The university asked me to teach a continuing education class on Web design. Then I got hired by an insurance startup programming ASP/MSSQL/IIS and the rest is history.

Started learning 8 years ago by simply reading source code and messing with it to see what does what. That progressed into modding then gradually overtime I picked up new languages to play with for fun.

Invisionfree forums reading javascript that rewrote the entire dom

Magazines and the dokumentation of the language.

Learnt to code by writing shitty code an getting scolded for it!

As a child I was fascinated with computers. I don't know what about them fascinated me but I knew they were powerful tools. For the longest I had the mentality that those with natural talent are meant to be programmers but recently I heard a quote that changed my perspective completely it says, "What I lack in natural talent I make up for in discipline." I'm learning my first language now and I'm obsessed with it and I'm learning new things everyday. I don't ever see myself stopping.

Copy-paste-edit. Started with javascript and PHP. I would copy a script and just edit some output. This was when blinking text, hit counters and guestbooks was all the rage.

My school didn't have any programming or CS classes, so I started to learn python online my junior year. I thought it was interesting so I declared a CS major in University. Now I'm about to graduate knowing java, c++, Ruby on rails, c#

I wrote my first code in 5th grade in QBasic, together with a friend who introduced me to it. We made a math "game", with hard coded problems, so you'd get the same questions everytime you played ;D

Brother taught me Java. I learned js and html through codecademy

Wen I got my first Android phone I came across a make your own Android app ad with one of those "no programing experience needed drag and drop interface" I made a few news feed apps then got completely hooked,then I thought "I want to control everything within the app and not only drag and drop stuff" that thought changed my life.I started learning phonegap and started making Android apps with html5 ,put ADs on and published them to the play store.I then expanded my knowledge learnt Java,mysql,php,wordpress.

I've always been creative; drawing, instruments, building stuff... Programming was just another way to express myself.

I acknowledge that I didn't know how to program until I was in 5th semester at my second try on data structures.

God! The best teacher I have ever had, and if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have learned what I know!

From that point onwards, it was just reading books they way that kept me up.

I know you're not here, but thanks Ms. Juanita 😁

Once upon a time I was thinking if I should do IT or another career. I started to wonder "Boy, I think I should learn how to program...". Then I watched Shia LaBeouf's JUST DO IT. Well, I didn't have much choice then besides doing IT, did I?

I spent a lot of my time as a little kid playing video games and typing on my old computer. Somehow I found GameMaker (6 or 7, I think) and started pumping out little games with the free version. I didn't like the drag and drop stuff so I learned GML (GameMaker Language).

A few years later someone gave me a PHP book and while I never actually learned anything from it, it did get me interested in learning a real programming language (not GML).

Around this time Minecraft became popular, and with a lot of YouTube videos I got a grasp on Java, and a little C++/C#.

Tinkering around in scripting languages finally lead me to JavaScript which of course introduced me to HTML and CSS.

I loved how quickly a website could me created compared to a compiled program, so I started spending most of my time learning Web Technologies.

And that leads me to where I am today. By this point I've spent over half of my life programing in various languages and formats and I've loved every bit of it!

Books, mostly. Never completed even one though. Started with VB6 a long time ago. Just wanted to create cool stuff. Then moved onto Java. Heck, even did J2ME. **shudders with horror** Now doing Android and Python mostly.

4 years in high school (turbo Pascal, Java, c++, didn't learn much more than basics), summer course with Macromedia director, a few college courses/internship with html/css/flash.

But most of all, just working and learning as I go.

my uncle showed me how to create applications in VB when I was 10 yo

Trial and Error!!!

Wrote some macros for Excel to make my job easier and decided I'd rather only do that part of my job, so I went back to school to learn to code for reals

I don't really remember... That can mean one of two things... It was to long ago... Or don't know how to do it yet... I do remember my first programming class, when my teacher said, "you just need to do a printf ..." And I asked, "what is that?" He looks at me, eyes wide open, for a huge amount of time, and then left without answering...

a side note, it was university class.

Didn't learn to code till late 20's

Always wanted to program since I was a little kid but was discouraged by everyone I ever talked to about it as it being 'too difficult .'

Finally had an awsome college professor that took special interest to encourage me to go after it.

I started learning programming in college. I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do but it sounded like I would enjoy it. And I was right!

Commodore 64 and manuals when I was 5. Then qbasic on a 286 my dad got from work when I was 6. Been programming since, to Borland c/c++, php, html etc. Worked with most languages since.

I learned at IT school, because I didn't want to learn bad practices. And I don't regret that choice, teachers and courses were great !

Hi. I learned to program when was playing EVE online about 7-8 years ago by writing simple private tool. Now I'm proud ex-pilot Android dev ^.^

My first programming book was the way pf c a swedish programming book about c

I wanted to know how this box called computer works, the screen, mouse, keyboard and all these weird things inside the box.

Now I'm developing softwares and don't want to hear a single thing about these fuckin' boring hardware stuffs.

Senior year of highschool (5 years ago), my friend and I were bored in Calculus class. The calculators we used were the TI-NSpire CX cas (the most advanced Texas Instruments graphing calculator at that time). After figuring out we could get a Game Boy Advance emulatir on the calculator, we decided we should try making out own game for it. That was when I figured out what I wanted to do with my life and havent looked back yet

Qbasic and commodore 64. :) little did i knew that would lead me to the world of c and c++ lol.

Well basically, my high school teacher taught us BASIC

Technical start: Through an internship during college.

Currently in the React business now, so I'll probably be relearning in a few days. 😁

AMOS on the Amiga and some version of Borland(Turbo?) Pascal

Thought hey I should make something and then made something. Fun times.

I was taught Perl and Java in just under 3 months during my Master's in Computational Biology which fueled a dislike towards these, so I self-taught myself Python and JavaScript in my free time and loving life now!

Amstrad CPC 128 book(GWBasic), my first lines of code about a loop game (Thousand of lines without debugger or memory save!) So it was like woot after 3 hours writing to see running the endless ship gamming trying to avoid walls. I will never forget that experience when I was 9-10 years old and get back to code at 23.

I started when I was about 7 years old. My dad was an entrepreneur and had a programmer working for him who was coding in the Commodore VIC20. That man gave me some books and since then I was hooked. Started my professional career when I was 16 (now 37), all self taught and got a very solid education as well throughout the years after 16 untill now. I just can't stop loving it.

I used codeacademy, codeschool.com, books and just practise

Wrote a program to draw a bike with Basic on Atari XE

Taugt myself javascript through online tutorials. Once you know one OOP language, it's easy to learn all other OOP languages.

I got tired of the redundancy of giving instructions to my parents on how to use our DVR, so I wrote the instructions on a white board. Appliance manufacturers kept coming up with upgrades; I wrote more instructions. After 4 years of computer science courses, lots of books, and hours googling, I was able to create instructions for my personal gadgets and my clients' machines.

college, codewars, stack overflow. college has so far only taught me the concepts, though

1 word: GOOGLE

For real though, I learnt to program with google, stackoverflow and a little bit of youtube :D

I love doing maths and used to score well in 10th and then my worst decision of taking commerce rather than non-medical.

I scored really bad in 12th, where I met a girl but was too shy to talk. Ah!! Anyway she was the only reason I used to attend classes.

Then I tried for B.Com which I was least interested and maybe because of destiny I did not get admission in any college. :D

So ended up in BCA, whoa life changing moment that was only computers, code, technology and atlast found a girl.

Now building up my code with my future.

"Be on a position when you don't need to introduce yourself"

at the age of 12 I was bored so I started with html as I wanted to make a website, at the age of 14-15 is started with pure php, at 16 I started my first IT study for second line support and at 18-19 I finished my first IT study and started my second IT study for support mangement and when I'm done with it I'm planning on doing a third one for data center engineering.

Self taught with online materials and the occasional book...still learning though

Everything I know is self taught... From a time I dunno when I'm 20, so likely just after the year 2000

From my perspective I think different from most devs more formally trained, which can be to my advantage , the downside of this I'm terrible with names, everything in computing has a anagram.

I'm bad with names anyway... Dyslexic 😉. But if explained to me I know what it is your on about.

I consider myself a good dev, not experienced but otherwise good. But I want to be the best...

I'm also a hacker (nice one) which I think helps me build better more secure programs knowing common vulnerabilitys

I'm proud of what I've achieved so far. Whilst I'm not perfect nor is my work that's what I work towards ... As should every dev

Started when I was 11 or so. An intro to robotics course at my school, we learned to program BOEBots (ya know, those little robots with wheels and a breadboard) in BASIC. Man they were fun!

I started modding Garry's Mod back in the day. To this day I love Lua. Such a fun language.

I started my journey in LUA modding games and creating little software tools.

Got my first computer, Commodore 64, when I was 9. My first thought and only agenda, how can I make this thing do what I want it to do. I believe there was a book that came with it that had programs in BASIC. I copied some and then began to fiddle around on my own. I fell in love and 32 years later, the saga continues.

Karel The Robot

By a professor that looked like a walrus...but really he looks like a walrus

First contact with code was about 10 years ago, trying to customize my own server of the old Tibia (pre historic mmo game) with lua language

I worked hard to learn it so I can impress and then ended up loving way too much that it became my career.

I started because the first PC I owned ran on Windows NT and, even though I can't recall for the life of me what, something always broke but was fixable with some command lines. After finding out about Batch scripts my exploration instinct kicked in and I started to make a script for nearly anything (at one point I even had a script to start Firefox). From there on I stumbled over C++ and what can I say, I quit programmin four times before I found Python and fell in love with this beautiful, pointerless snake which led me on the way of becoming a programmer. So, long story short, a broken OS and all that free time you have during school if you always copy your Honework in breaks^^.

I started playing around with computers when I was about 3 years old, than at 12 my "Technology" teacher showed us a programmer he and his colleagues made, a free and open source version of Logo, logoit. You could control a turtle and make it draw lines on a plan. Than I got into c++ and web development.

With the help of GameMaker.
It was my first look behind the scene of video games. At first I was using Drag&Drop.
Then slowly I got my hands dirty by coding and I started to enjoy it. I then later (after reaching the highest level possible in GML (jk)) decided to learn more famous languages.

When I was about 11 years old I got my my own laptop and got interested in learning about computers. Started learning batch and could make some pretty fun text based games. Then as I got into my teens I stopped paying attention to the computer. But now that I'm older I see a bright future with Java development, with it being so multi-platformed. I'm now restating my passion for code and learning java. :)

First microcontrollers, then university, now self-taught, with plenty of Googling all through.
Mainly working with VBA and PHP at the moment

Just doing stupid animations in scratch and thinking that one day i will be able to hack a bank 😝

My first program was a Hello world in my school lab on an old Turbo C compiler running on a Novell Netware server, in '13.
The thrill, seeing the code run and the output on the screen, was so mesmerising, I haven't looked back ever since then.

My grandfather taught me APL and I taught myself C/C++ and Java. Then I went and got a degree.

Fate chose Computer Science for me.

It's only after 1st semester of Computer Science Undergraduate Program that I came across C, my first programming language. I had no idea what a CS Degree is all about. It was a blind shot, to be honest.

I wrote a few programs and fell in love with coding. I got high after solving every problem. I craved for more. It's all magical!

I'm enjoying every moment of my developer career. It's a hell lot of fun! I'm glad that my blind shot turned out be a good one.

I started in school with visual basic at the age of 13. my father then told me to learn php cause it could be useful one day. I wrote a little browser game and got really into it. In the meantime we switched to c++ in school and did a bit of Java.

Now I am studying software engineering and got my first job as a php developer thanks to my father. This led me to nodejs + angularjs development which I am currently working with (and Java at the university)

Started at 14 trying to learn cpp to hack networks. I failed miserably. Real enlightening came with python.

The first code i ever wrote was a script for an Oblivion mod back in 2010.

GWBasic on a Tandy 1000. I wrote a guessing game then a super super shitty implementation of blackjack. Ahh the fun of numbering you own lines.

thanks to stackoverflow 😊😊

Trail and error... So many errors.

Also watching videos to learn how code fits together, as well as looking for other people's example code to reverse engineer it, modify it to see what changed.

I use to have a very slow computer so i google search how to speed it

It came with a .bat script that refresh the ram, after that i wanted to know how that script had work.
And 11ish years later is my life and career

And, yeah, at that time i didn't care about security and why you shouldn't run a script without know what does it do 😅

Also, that script get lost forever in my broken old computer

It all started when I was 15, I was a general geek and started reading about html and CSS, as I needed it for my GCSE, enjoyed it so In time found ampache and decided that I wanted to convert a phpnuke theme to it...

QBasic. Lots and lots of QBasic...

Started with LOGO in 6th grade. FD, RTing the turtle was pretty cool, so thought I'd give this programming thing a shot..

I started with logo where you typed commands to run logo. I wrote a script to create shapes. Started web dev in college when a friend taught me bit of php. I felt that it was the best thing ever. I just couldn't stop exploring more and more since that day. I've worked with c/c++ projects too.

Minecraft. I ran it in Eclipse debug mode and started messing around with the code without knowing a thing about java.

I started with programming through a Minecraft mod called Computercraft. You programmed a computer with lua. Some time later I played with python, and then I was hooked. I am a self taught programmer and have tried many different languages since.

I wish I knew about thenewboston earlier :o

I built a VB app to help do my trig homework.

Started programming in BASIC when I was 11 (back in 1979) on a Tandy TRS-80, then onto Sinclair's machines (ZX81, Spectrum), then BBC Micro, Commodore Amiga, PCs, onto Macs and here we are! 😂

Took a Visual Basic class in high school. Ended up being the teacher aide two years later while she was away recovering from surgery.

Like a lot of school kids in the UK, I learned BASIC on a BBC Model B and later BASIC/COMAL on my Archimedes A3000.

It taught almost nothing relevant to real programming. A terrible and inefficient way to learn! But there were no better resources then. No Internet access.

About 10 yrs ago, I learned html/css, nect I had to learn C#, cos my former IT tracher thought tgat I must be good at programming and enrolled me in a competition. I've never stopped learning ever since.

1987 at seven years old. Dad bought me an Atari ST. It came with a Language Disc, containing the ST Basic program. Didn't know what it was, but dad learned from the guy in the shop it was for making your own programs.

So along with a manual, together we wrote our first program:

10 PRINT "ST";
20 GOTO 10
RUN

In the corner window, the results unravelled. I was so excited. Never looked back.

Started with qbasic when really young, by moding the tower game. Later got into a programming course where i picked php & Java, and lately got Python and golang from professor Google

I started with js and html about 13 years doing some basic html pages with a mate in school for an IT teacher then PHP about 10 Years ago with the help of PHPFreaks forum and C#/Java about 7 years ago in college

Took C++ at community college, in 2012, just for fun. I've been programming ever since.

Currently in a boot camp. Just finished with python/flask/django...during the html/css part of the camp I literally had "attack of the divs" nightmares.

One day I decided I wanted to build robots.
And not kidding the reason I wanted to build them was because I wanted someone interesting to talk to and stil not kidding I even fantasized about a robot girlfriend... Lame I know I think I was a lonely little guy back then, though even after 7 years or so it doesn't feel as though it's that long ago. Maybe because things didn't change that much. Which is worrying but it's not the topic so I will pass on that future-past worries bullcrapper. After learning how robots worked and what made them function so things gradually led up to me being more interested in machine learning applications and software. I learned Arduino at first, I think I still have some messy circuits and old arduinos around. I only finished one robot though and it couldn't even support it's own weight. The servo motors were taking too many amps that heated up the little arduino even with a fan attached. Provably I should have made use of mechanics for robots books and calculated things first. But even though it couldn't walk properly I still felt success and I loved it like my own kid (me taking it apart was questionable but believe me). After that I focused more on writing code than using my hands to make things which was a pain in the ass if I might add.
After learning arduino and making that failed project of mine. I then picked up C++ wrote hello world program usual things a starter would do. It was the language I wrote my first game which I finished and this time it worked. But I never released it which was partly because I didn't want to spend a hundred bucks on a license for the engine and I also knew that it was a shit game. If I were to describe; lines in different colors come from the top you need to hit the lines with the same colored columns to break them. The columns changed their height and location on random. The lines sped up and gap between them decreased. Now that I think about it it wasn't half bad. But the code was written in game maker studio's version of C so I have no way to salvage it.
But I learned a lot of things from that project and that was the goal, so I would call it a win. I don't remember but after sometime I switched to python. And I'm glad I did, it's fun to code in which was the main reason I coded in the first place. Fun.
Life happens and time passes,

Now I'm waiting to enter college exams in a few months after hopefully passing them. My goal is to get into computer engineering which will be extremely challenging because it's the highest point department in the university I'm aiming at. But hey if the challenge is great the reward is greater right ? To be honest I'm still not sure about my career path. Too many choices. So I will just let my own road called <millions of similarly random events that are actually caused by deterministic reactions, to affect you and your surroundings leading up to a future which only the Laplace's demon can forsee> guide me. Wish me luck.

while( me.onSchool( true ) ){
learn( java );
}

C was my first thing in 10th grade, now I am in college, in touch with some Java and Python, and hopefully some more in the near future.

I learnt how to code, first, on code.org. Then on codecademy. There I learnt the basics of HTML5/CSS3, Javascript, Ruby and Ruby on Rails. I also began buying booking on J Query.

When I was in college i did a software devlopment course. We learned was VB but it inspired me and a buddy to continue to program. Currently learning Java and C#

Learned php all by myself, started with session to add stuff to an HTML web site a friend did. Took me a while to write hideous code, I had a chance to look at the code a couple years later.

Studied applied physics and electro engineering for 3years since I'm a stubborn idiot, went shit. Had my first code course in C and knew that I had to change education. Life quality increased by a factor of 10 for me. And I haven't looked back ever since.

There were no tools that would of been a great help during my college courses. So I decided to make my own. After a long time of hammering Google and watching YouTube videos it clicked, I fell in love with programming and I built the tools to make my life easier.

I started because i am sick of sailing and read about atonomous ship bu rollsroyce (marine engineer)

My first program was on Q-BASIC to draw some shapes! Have come a long way!

Creating automation scripts while I was sysadmin to slack off. Good ol' VBScript

Back in '95 my grandfather started creating his online gallery and I've started to get interested in it, but quickly found the limitations on manual labour and started to look into more advanced solutions...

Looking back I realise I had Lego Mindstorms. That had basic drag and drop programming for the robot. I could say I started there, but really only messed with it for my pretend play. Then I did data entry in HS. Never messed with until my wife made me pick a major so i would stop being a professional student. Started C++ in college. Where I work uses Excel, so I have been messing with the macros using VBA. Currently building websites for another class.

It was compulsory to study logo at the school, class 4. Was around 10 at that time. Love what I could make the turtle do with commands. FF 2 years, learnt HTML in school. Loved how some tags made a webpage. Didn't code for next 7 years(idiotic decision?). Started with Java and Android development and fell in love again. Didn't let it go this time 😀