Me (6yo): Whatcha doing?
Dad: Programming.
Me: ???
Dad: If I type this on the screen and hit this key *color appeared on screen*
Me: *eyes go wide... Dad is magician*

And here I am nearly 30 years later still learning.

And now i'm feeling guilty every time i call new Guid().

I was a freshman in highschool when I encountered the book entitled "Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6 in 21 Days"

I loved that book so much that it took me 4 years to finish it.

> be me
> want to write troll "viruses" to fck arround with frieds
> write batch files
> shit everyone can see what I do
> google 'how to make exe'
> install VS
> google 'make exe with vb.net'
> spend 3hr/s copying the Internet
> send friend exe
> blocked by antivirus
> write other bullshit
> actually learn stuff
> shit I'm kinda good at this
> keep going
> 4 years later
> be system administrator / devop / web dev / app dev / desktop dev
> get paid
> inb4 wants to troll friend - finds dream job instead

Writing a dot and trying out every interesting function autocomplete gave me

An average day:

1. Start working on feature
2. Finish feature
3. Feature doesn't work
4. Spend 7 hours refactoring and fixing imaginary bugs
5. Add the 3 characters that were missing
6. Laugh and cry, laugh and cry...

1) Stop going to univershity
2) Started python coding at home from online courses.
3) Got the best paid job among batchmates.

When I was a kid I used to play on my old Pentium computer all night after my mother sleeps. One night she caught me playing, she pushed the cabin from the table and broke it 😵. After then I tried to fix it and succeeded. Since then started learning about computers and now a back end engineer..

This was my process!

I apologies for my bad English.

I was 14 and addicted to PC games, I take money from my dad and bought new games every day

One day he got angry and told me: "What's are you doing with your life son? I don't pay for your games anymore! If you can build your own game and play with it!"

My mother had a computer academy, So i ask her to teach me how to build a game! She starts teaching me VB6, It was amazing.
After that, i started programming, Searching for VB6 sample code all day.

We had a local online game and it was a time killer, So i build an auto bot for this game to play for me, wit VB6. It works great, And send it to my friends and they loved it. Then I create a website and put it there so other players can use it, And after some days downloads reach 5000 times! I was shocked! Then I put a lot of time and improve it, Downloads reach 15000! After three years it reaches 50,0000 and more.
Between these years I learned VB.Net, C#, HTML, CSS, JS, Java and Android programming. Just because of some game.
And really thanks to my parent to put me in this path, It's great.
I think I can never get enough of coding!

But haven't created any games yet, So learning continues :)

Rashly say to a web developer colleague that you'd quite like to learn to code. Feel too awkward to decline the subsequent invitation. Meet for coffee, discuss basics. Understand nothing. Go home and Google extensively. Start trying code out at home. Cry. Swear. Make a thing that does a thing. Try to make another thing. Fail. Give up. Try again. Start an online tutorial. Work through said online tutorial. Start contributing on Github. Discuss Laravel. Play with Laravel. Set out your own Laravel project. Get engaged to the colleague who said they'd teach you. Get sent a technical test. Stare at the test blankly for days on end. Have an idea. Try to implement the idea. Cry some more, swear some more. Enjoy it. Get hooked. Hate it. Enjoy it. Finish it. Stare at the screen in amazement and wonder what has gone wrong because you are getting the result you were expecting. Rinse, repeat.

School course on C/C++ was so shitty I resorted to YouTube where I found this awesome channel called TheNewBoston

1. learns java at uni
2. never uses java again

Got a graphing calculator in high school for math class. Needed to memorize a bunch of formulas, saw you could program them in the calculator with BASIC. Sold the program to other students, profit.

- "I wanna make games !"
- Bought a book about games and they stated about learning to code.
- learned to code
- never finished one single game :/

I tried to learn Java by watching tutorial videos on YouTube. After falling sleep on chapter 3, the next day I started programming in JavaScript.

Don't ask how, don't ask why.
And yes, I thought that Java and JavaScript was the same... For about 5 minutes until finding StackOverflow.

Good times.

Wanted to make a website with some of my friends about whatever kid thing we were into at the time. None of our parents cared, it was the 90s and nobody took the internet seriously.

Copied and pasted bits of html into notepad and FTPed them to some free webhost over dialup. The website lasted three weeks -- my friends got bored, I got hooked.

A few years later I found myself wondering why some websites used ".php" instead of ".html". I discovered this shiny new thing called PHP 4. Built a website for some video game I was into using it. Spent the next two years teaching myself everything there was to know.

Took programming in high school. Chose CS over mechanical engineering because I liked the university better. Got an internship which turned into a job which turned into a career.

R.T.F.M.

When i found devrant in play store. I dont know why, but because it was something like a community, installed it, found out java, installed eclipse, then found out android is java (well at that moment...) so i am doing android development until now! (me 15)

StackOverfllow -> Copy Code -> Doesn't work -> Study its working -> Read related info on other websites -> Code starts to make sense -> Do the required changes in code as per the understanding -> Got it working.
I only learn if the initial 2 steps fail. Else I skip the latter.

Who needs friends if you can read programming books?

Late 90's, I was about 12-13, Realized the source I was viewing was pretty much the whole website. Created a tribute page for rock music. It looked like a regular ol' shitty 90's website. Then one day my father showed me it's mentioned in quite a complementing way in a big national newspaper under the web section, didn't realize till much later that he was probably the one who informed them about its existence, but it was too late, as I've already tasted the fame&glory. Thanks dad! :)

"I wanna make websites! HTML and CSS are simple enough. Ooo, what's JavaScript?"

I didn't start coding until my 30s. I enjoy learning spoken languages, and heard on a radio show that computer coding works the same parts of the brain. Tried it and became an addiction. Been building things ever since, and now making it a career.

Age 19, got a government sponsored chance to go to India to study. Was called to study for Law. But didn't like it. Decided I wanted to change to Computer Science cause that's what I was interested in. Go to India and apply for computer science course but not law despite Parents wanting me to do law because hey Lawyers job is a good status in society.

Got a spot in BCA (Bachelor of Computer Application) . Totally new in programming. Started with C. Was freaked out with all the new things. Variables, comments, Pre processors files. All was new to me. Although the lecture tried her best, I couldn't understand her well because of language barrier. It was a mixture of Hindi and English.

Luckily she gave me a book to read, Let us C. That book helped me a ton. I realized I really liked programming. When summer holiday came I taught myself C++ . Then next summer Java. Then Android. Then some Web Development. That was last summer. But I kinda settled in Android and did some projects in it. Right now I am about to sit for my final exam. Then I will try my best to get an Internship or a job.

My dad was a computer engineer, taught me a bit, my high-school boyfriend (now husband) studied computer science, and I studied liberal arts. I couldn't get a job but got at job at my husband's startup. I learned a lot on the job and started doing tutorials online and I am the only person in my MA cohort with a job. Always been comfortable in the tech/dev world but didn't get into it myself until last year.

Playing way too many games when I was younger I realised I could do work with computers as a job if spent that time teaching myself.
Uninstalled Windows to stop temptation, hellooooo Linux

It all started in the year 2013.
I was 13 years old back then. I was a fan of Minecraft and so I learned how to setup a bukkit server and ran it. Installing plugins was fun, because I could be a "hacker" and change the configs.
After a while, (~2014), when I was in the 9th grade of elementary school, I saw Unity. A free game engine. Of course, me being a 14 year old I was intrigued and so I downloaded it, made an account and a new project. I had absolutely ZERO knowledge of programming. Didn't even know what languages existed, so i resorted to presets and poorly put together characters + weapons.
After some time fiddling around with Unity, I've gotten a hang of the basics (not programming related).
My actual programming started when I started High School (year 2016). It's a computer engineering school and for the first part of the year, I've learned from my teacher in C# (Console.WriteLine/ReadLine/Loops/Variables). At the second semester I started to gain interest and motivation to program at home. I did the programs we made in school (random number guessing game) but better. Improved it, added colors.
After that, I started developing in Unity - Actually learning something and having the ability to develop something all by myself. It keeps driving me on. In the second year (the year I'm visiting right now) I tought myself HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP. I'm very happy and also can't wait to discover and learn new things in these languages!
My latest project was an Android application for my father that he asked for (it calculated the price of the 3D print he would make).

// Sorry for the long post!

EDIT: Forgot to add a fun little detail. All my classmates make fun of me because I program so much !
Also: Tabs > Spaces

I pretty much just copied code from Google for a good 2 years, following tutorials on Java, until I actually got a basic understanding of wtf I was doing. I could understand the syntax, loops, and conditional statements well, but for some reason I didn't quite understand the concept of an object until I took a class on Java development during my high school career, where it finally 'clicked'.

I have this great professor who taught us how to be logical human beings (not that I learned much of that haha). He introduced us to web dev. He started with the basic html shit, then proceed with php and sql. His lectures were awesome. He'll then proceed with code exercises. And we'll have mini 'codefights' in his classes! yey! He taught us that in programming, it is much more important to practice logic than master a single language(no hate please). I learned to love programming through his passion. :) I learned to program in his class, now I hope never to stop learning. :D

I first got into software when found an broken printer abandoned in my front porch and u fixed it. That was when I realised that I would be an IT guy
.
.
.
.
.
.just kidding

When I was about 12, I was stuck on a certain level in a PC game. I wrote my first patch in C++ to give me God mode. First time I realized programming was the most powerful thing one can do in the universe...

I need to build this, but fuck php.
Research.
Chose ruby on rails.
Bougth course on Udemy.
Took another course on Lynda.
Build it.
Now I love ruby.

Every time I want to learn new technology I spend whole day just installing and reinstalling and then I end up with reinstalling whole linux, because 1 lil' thing doesn't work. Am I alone?

Basically script-kiddy-copy-pasting some C++ until I understood how it worked lol (and then learned it properly)

When I was little my brother and I got a ZX Spectrum 128k (James Bond edition) for Christmas. I started writing the programs to show a clock, union jack and other bits and bobs from one of these books. After probably 20ish years of not writing any code I went to university and graduated last year. I now work as helpdesk/software developer. But the ZX Spectrum programming started it all!

I used to think I was so clever by viewing the source code of websites, and would just scroll through it for fun, but what really got me started in programming was the TI-83 calculator I got in grade 10.

You couldn't view the code of most programs on that calc without a computer connection, but I managed to get my hands on the source code of something simple and learned how to prompt for values and calculate things with them. Before I knew it, I was making little programs in BASIC that did formulas for me (Area/circumference of a circle, etc.). One of my professors caught me showing my calculator to another student in class, and assumed I was being a bad student. When I said I made a program as a shortcut for one of the formulas we were learning, she tried to call my bluff and said to write the whole program on the whiteboard for the class to see. 10 minutes of writing and more than one blank stare from my classmates later, the teacher just waved me off and continued the lesson. I was chuffed :-). I made these simple programs for all my math classes throughout high school.

Unfortunately, my first year of university I took a CS course, and my teacher was probably the worst I've ever had in my life. I decided it wasn't for me, and though I did maintain my general aptitude for tech (and was still the person who fixed everyone's printers and viruses), I took a different path, eventually getting an Arts degree in Anthropology.

Where I live, the market for this is more than stale. In fact, it's completely flat, so I thought I would take a course about programming with Arduinos for fun and see if I should return to school for a different certification. It was AWESOME! I made a wireless weather station with Xbees and sensors and built my own anemometer.

I got a job at a manufacturing company, and had the fortune to build a robot which eventually made it's way to the second season of Battlebots. The level of intelligence and enthusiasm I encountered really inspired me, and now here I am at 31, halfway through a BSc in Computer Science and working for a company that makes 3D printers.

It's been a long journey, but the adventure always starts anew tomorrow.

I tried a few methods.

First osmosis. I would put several programming books under my pillow but that was just a pain in the neck.

Next I tried the TF/RQ methods. I would try to write some code not knowing anything about the language. When it didn't work I'd rage quit and flip the table. That ended with a pile of broken IKEA desks and a lot of spilled coffee. (RIP Coffee 😔)

Finally I sat down and came up with a problem I wanted to solve. I googled it, looked at answers. Tried the code myself, if it worked I'd go over it piece by piece so I could explain to anyone exactly what it did and why.

Honestly, learning to code just comes down to doing it and being fearless. The more curious you are, the more you'll learn.

2013 Wanted to make games with unity, no prior experience. Failed horribly learning unity script. Nothing made sense.

2014 change in carreer from retail to sysadministration at a local small recycling company ( no prior experience other than being a digital native )

2015 Got bored at work, learned c# with scott lillys tutorials. It clicked!

2016 i enroll in cs at local university. Acing most classes, even got a b on the math module i took. I am 28 now and my life changed a bunch to the good thanks to coding, tech and cs.

Doing tons of research and learning, trial and error to infinity and pushing through when I thought 'fuck this shit I'm so fucking done'!

Set out to copy the iOS alarm on android because a) android's stock alarm is fugly and b) all other sleep reminder apps either offer me way too much or no functionality.

Week 1: "Oh, custom UIs need a lot of math... Ok."
Week 2 "Why on earth is my ram usage at 400 mb?!"
Week 6: "I have come to the realisation that android's ByteArrayDecoder should burn in hell.
Week 7: "Man... They sure made the management of intents and pending intents a pain."
Week 10: There. It works. Two classes, 7000 lines of code.... Hmmmm maybe apply MVP."
Week 11: I discovered embarrassment driven development, throw away all my code and start from scratch.
Week 12: Oh ButterKnife, where have you been all my life?
Week 17: I might actually finish this in my life time!
Week 28: Man, this MVP and managing Context, intents, SQLITE DB and pending intents do not mix well.
Week 46: I discover RxJava and Dagger 2
Week 47: I discover that the 'V' in MVP does not refer to an 'Activity'
Week 48: My StudyBudy says to me "Man, exams are only a month away!"
Week 49: I put all your code in my github, delete it locally and focus back on being a student.

Udemy, youtube, trial & error, SO.

Also, lots of hair pulling. 😬

It was 1986. I'd just bought a computer because I wanted to make a cool flight sim like I saw a friend at school do by typing in a bunch of code from a magazine. I read a thick book on DOS/BASIC and another on Assembler. As I had no idea what Assembler could possibly be useful for in my life, I went the DOS/BASIC route and made some fun programs. Then it was Prolog followed by C and Smalltalk and then HTML and JavaScript. All by taking classes or reading books and then making something useful or teaching others.

My brother, who is a programmer too, throwed the big java book at me and said: Read this and you'll have a job. So I read it and got a job. I'm a practical learner, so I just picked up the basics from the book. OOP and all that I learned while working. It was like a decently payed apprentice position. But I was my own teacher.

Sure, I learned a bunch in school, but you don't really start learning until the first shit storm happens on the job. Then you realize how much you still don't know!

I started out learning Python. And before you "tsk, kids these days", it was before Python became the go to starter language for a lot of universities. No, I started learning around age 12.

My dad (a programmer himself), bought "Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner" and we went through it together. He started out holding my hand as I went through the exercises, but pretty quick I was getting through them mostly on my own.

It was really fun, and I'm absolutely going to do the same if/when I have children of my own. The books exercises were all games, which made it really fun. Instead of "hello world", the first program printed "game over". I was super proud of the hangman game I eventually wrote.

It gave me a leg up when I started taking actual classes, and really instilled a love of coding and puzzle solving in me that propelled me through two degrees.

Watched a TED Talk about this cool site that wants to bring open education to all.
Forgot about it.
Remembered i
the video a week later, checked it out.
Front page saw a course for Python for beginners.
Watched the first video.
Got hooked.
Never turned back.
Thanks Coursera :)

After that I relied more on books as the knowledge is layed out in a more concrete fashion and are probably nore revised. So better content, more accurate information, more advanced and in depth knowledge.

I started doing a little HTML coding for a training site I wanted to build for my employer. Every time I thought "there must be a way to do this..." There was! It was so rewarding to build something by myself that I kept going into CSS and JavaScript, then PHP, and now Python. A few months ago I could just about code a hyperlink and make some bold text, so I'm quite proud of how far I've come :)

When i was 12 or so, my mom bought me the java for dummies book. Don't get me wrong, thats not where i learned from, it just motivated me to find actually useful resources to do so.

> Found a VBScript to show a messagebox (2008)
> Got challenged to hack an FPS
> Copy-pasted VB6 into VS2008 Express
> Did not understand a single error
> Learned VB.NET
> C#
> Windows died, Linux installed
> Python
> C++
> PHP/HTML/CSS

Now I work with C#, PHP and C++
And I am still not able to properly inject a DLL to hack an FPS (I think)

Taught myself to code in the wee hours while my wife and son slept after working and finishing my actual collegiate schoolwork. I continue to learn daily and the process is pretty much the same, minus the schoolwork.

-Discovers new tech
-Follows the "getting started" page
-Spends hours to get the example project working
-Gets bunch of exceptions
-Cries

Well is a long story, but to make it short, a friend started to teach me HTML after that at school they taught me c++, and after my first "Hello World" I was hooked, since then I became an addict to programming and now to devrant

My process (still going on):
*Pick a topic/language/anything.
*Read up as much as I can until my eyes start glazing over.
*Try to implement something.
*Screw up.
*Feel bad. Repeat until screw-ups reasonably reduced.
*Success???

With limited Internet in 92 :P I read magazines and did line by line from the books. From Atari 520 ST, to vb6, then into PHP, C++ and C#, it's fully been a ride of self learning.

I envy the new generation with the massive amount of online learning sites. At age 36, been programming since I was 12. What an advantage young kids have today!

>Wanted to become a hacker because I thought it was cool and fun
>Googled how to become a hacker
>Read a lot of articles
>Talked about it with nerdy friends who ended up helping me with a few resources
>Found Hack Forums
>Stayed on Hack Forums for a while and learnt a lot about malware and hacking and realized I needed to learn how to code to build my own hacking programs
>Got a book from a friend (It was a dev book based on basic)
>Got fascinated with programming and quickly moved on to C++
>Got frustrated with C++ and quit programming for months
>Got introduced to VB.Net and I finally could write codes and development a lot of applications, mainly malware creators and crypters as they were called on HE
>Quit HF and hacking and got into coding seriously and learnt web dev , then java and developing android apps and I have been happy since.

My grandpa thougt me assembler when i was 7, I modded an hard drive with him (multiple write heads on one disc). Then i learned pascal. As my fathel work at sap, i got a free webdew course. And now, im "learning" c++ (rather sharpening my skills than learning)

Back then, I was just about a "computer guru" and friends would often ask me stuff about hardware.

One of them came to me and asked if I could make a website. I accepted despite knowing nothing about html, css, js or PHP.

I then hopped on a tutorial about html and css, and pretty much learned the basics of html in a day, then added some css and got introduced to PHP "as a way to prevent yourself from copy pasting the same bits of html everywhere".

Turned out the client wanted a CMS, which I couldn't do, then I decided I would go to a design/it school. Before finishing my 'studies' (accelerated apprenticeship), I already landed my today's job. As I'm not a "real dev" (more a self taught guy), I'm learning stuff everyday, and today I am comfortable with back end and front end web development

Code is addicting, even more than gaming!

1. When i was 11 years old i came across a trojan horse program and i sent it to all my school friends to get their messenger password.
(I had a list of passwords of all the people in my class... dont worry, i didnt even used the passwords, i just stored them in my list lol)

2. Took data structures 10 years later, hated it and switched to electrical eng

3. I was working on a manufacturing plant as the lead engineer and one of my prototypes was misbehaving and i was blaming software and software was blaming me...typical stuff... So i said "im going to get a masters is software so i can know wtf you are talking about, and tell you that you are wrong😠!!"

Got in school, started in the masters and quit that place i was working for 🤣.. (they were shitty people and unethical business... fyi)

Now im back to where i was was when i was 11... (minus the hacking email accounts of my classmates)

I started to get interested in programming at the age of 13. I was started spending a lot time in our school library and read mostly technical books (beginner/hobbyist stuff) about electronics.
Some book was about Quick Basic (hence my username).
On Windoze 95 in a DOS mode IDE I started trying stuff out and soon I had my first tiny console game.
A bit later I started with HTML and CSS stuff, made a website about ongoing jokes in our class and some rants, later I got into VB6 (I hate VB nowadays!) and wrote for a personal school project a learning software (relatively simple one) to learn vocabulary for foreign languages.

At about 15 I started with C++ and later C# .NET, which I liked the most, and started on some new Windows.Forms stuff, created some small websites.

Now I'm working parttime as a professional developer (mostly web, but VR & .NET too) and studying EE at a university.

My parents had no experience with computers at all, so I learned everything myself an with the help of the allmighty internet (the black box with the red dot on top).

That's my story. ;)

Insert your rant about this below this line:
-----------------------------------------

1. Learn BBC Basic with my dad
2. Learn JavaScript on codecademy
3. Do random shit
4. Learn C#

Typing 2 pages of sprite codes from a magazine, then saving the little game onto an audio cassette...

Learned basic Java syntax and created an Android app by reading a lot of posts on stackoverflow
Also a lot of trial and error...

Writing prank scripts in VBS after i found one on the school server

Previously, I use Codecademy to learn code.

Now I learn from my friends. Believe me, they helped understand OOP better.

I met this guy on DC++ (good ol' times) who studied Visual Basic, and I was so jealous that he could create his own apps (I was like 10) that with his and Google's help I learnt it by myself. Then as Internet got bigger and bigger (early 2000s) I decided to learn JS and HTML. I'm not a professional, but I'm pretty confident with my skills 😊

Started with a "Python for Kids" book when I was in fourth grade, hated it, but a week later I went to a summer camp with my friend where we made a cool CSS3-styled website. Then on, I've finished most of the courses on codecademy, and built some games and apps, and more websites that my friends wanted. Welp :/, if you need me I'll be making my AI or working on an OS. I guess you could say my process was giving up on Python ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Me: I'm bored this could be handy
Me 1 hour latera
Me: hey this is a fun language and it looks efficient for this task *learns things so that I can do x task in y language*
Me couple hours later
This was fun what now

Started getting bugs and glitches in my dreams.

wk49 can be taken two ways..

"How do you start learning a language?"

"What got you into programming?"

I wanted a personal website when I was 15. My brother-in-law sat me down, showed me Dreamweaver and told me "Learn this stuff. It will be valuable when you're older." I dragged and dropped and then looked at the resulting code. Then came sites for friends. Finally, college. I still learn new stuff all the time with each project. I couldn't be happier!

Eat
Sleep
Code
Repeat

I *cannot* be the first person in history that wants to do this.

Someone much smarter than must have already done, packaged it and sold distribution rights to the T-shirt.

Time to Google the sh*t out of it...

What?
I don't get it?
That doesn't make any scene....
goto line 5980
😎 coding like a boss....
goto line 8764
🤡 I have no idea what I'm doing....

I always thought programming was not for me, simply because I'm not really good at math. I studied graphic design, but switched to an education called Interactive Multimedia Design, which teaches a combination of webdevelopment and -design. At first, I thought I'd love the design part more, and would really struggle with development, but it turned out that I was a natural; I wrote my first Java program and I fell in love with programming. 6 years later I'm a happy full stack JS developer, rarely doing any graphic work anymore. I do have a soft spot for UX still, but that only makes me better at what I do on a daily basis, imho.

code code and code. There's no better way to learn other than practicing the material learned from docs.

- Played with and learned Scratch
- Learned some Python, made some weird little programs
- Learned C, using two good books: K&R C and Zed Shaw's "Learn C the Hard Way" (back when it was still in development and was free to read on the internet)
- Made LOTS of programs in C
- Came back to Python when I wanted to learn network programming
- Learned some Racket/Lisp, Bash scripting along the way
- Now I use all of the above, minus Scratch

-See vaguely interesting feature in language (currently C#)
-Look at the docs and psuedocode to get a feel for what the feature is intended for
-Design small project around the feature
-Learn the feature by using it

I started learning Programming by building Android Apps, Without even knowing that this is how Java Works.. And after that I was introduced to Java at college.. Kinda reverse process

I read books on programming. The thing I most like about programming books is that they allow you to learn about topics that you would have never have thought to explore. When people look things up online, they tend to search very specific things, most times actual code. The internet is an incredible source for developers, don't get me wrong. But books allow you to learn about programming in a conceptual way which in turn will make learning new languages easier and allow your understanding of the languages you already know to be deeper.

Learned via iOS tutor overnight to build a basic single page app. Told I can able to learn fast. Started as intern at a startup. Learned rapidly because I was the only one who building the entire product.

I started out on a Sinclair ZX 80. It has just 512 bytes of ram and you had to use a function button together with a key for each command since it did not have enough memory to keep the source in memory ;)

I attended few basic courses and then went on to hold them.

After a year there was suggestions of starting pascal courses so during the summer I read up in turbo pascal 5.5 but since the summer home did not have electricity I had to do it all theoretically for the first month before getting to try it out.

I got to try visual basic when doing school practice with Microsoft but the name was not set by then as it was a few months before the release.

Thats also where the more professional programming got going even though I did one pascal program that was used professionally before that.

Ooh... one I can participate in...

My dad was a Java developer, which primarily got me interested.

Back in early 2012, a favorite MMOG of mine shut down and I was interested in how it worked. I was 13 at the time. A friend of mine, on hearing of my interest, emailed me a bunch of links including Chris Pine's ruby tutorial and TheNewBoston.

From then on I tinkered a little with a bunch of different technologies, picked up a few programming books, and now we're here. I've made a little money as a Java developer and I'm working on an iOS game, but I'm still learning and tinkering with new technologies.

In our country there are only one or two hackathons a year :((((

I Started in 2012 at 12 years old with Minecraft as an introduction to computer programming. I created a few of my own mods and released them to the forums. I think my name was "lilwillis2" if you want to look them up. Once I created mods, I got into game development. I used The Cherno's game programming tutorials and a few others on youtube. After having my fun with game Dev and the debt of College soon to come, I got into developing my own apps, which got me into using react-native. React native made me realize that I should probably try to stay up to date with the latest frameworks and languages, so that I can create a surpieror product in much less time. It also made me realize how quickly programming changes. Last year, before getting into react-native, I got a summer job using Django and mezzanine at a local company as a web developer and they want me to work there again this year, maybe even on a salary with a pay raise. I recently turned 18 and I already look at code I wrote a few months ago as crap 😂, but hey it means I'm improving quickly!

BTW, if anyone knows any tips on paying/saving for college, please do let me know!

> be me
> studying 1.5 years liberal arts stuff and general education class at community college
> transfer to a 4 year university.
> realize I need a major
> Realize I also I wanted to 9ne day have a family.
> realize family would need money
> "struggling actor" not a great choice
> pray about what I should be doing
> get distinct impression that instead of attending the session on majors at the college of fine and performance arts to go to session with the college of Science and engineering.
> hear pitch for computer science.
> signup for introduction to programming taught with c++.
> A couple semesters down the line take 3 classes all at once Discrete Math 1, Linear Algebra, and database design and administration.
> around week 6 realize that all 3 classes revolved around sets and set logic and set math.
> realize rdbs's are "applied" set math and that Each class a little more "applied" than the former.
> Be genius at SQL and set math
> havereally smart database teacher mentored me
> get introduced to the recruiter at the career fair.
> get interviews
> get flown out for 2md interview
> get internship
> do work, and get project back under budget
> a job offer
> finish senior year
> start as a "real" developer supporting business data and analytics.
> ???
> profit.

Age 8 - Gets first computer and struggles with dial up Internet and my parents yelling at that they ended to use the phone

Ages 12 to 18 - Gets first laptop, starts messing around and interested in websites, gets involved with SMF, and open source message board system written in Php, and starts helping people out, eventually getting paid work for setting up websites etc.. which lead onto learning html/CSS and picking up bits and pieces of Php (and also Photoshop/Illustrator etc..)

Age 18 - Goes to college to study Multimedia, refreshes knowledge of HTML/CSS, learns a bit of Actionscript and some PHP

Age 20 - finishes Multimedia degree, ends up working as an IT consultant for a small business, which leads me to pick up a bit of bash scripting, small hit more PHP. Leaves this after 3months and decides to do a small Software Dev course. Get my first taste of Java and Visual Basic there

21 - Enter into a Software Dev degree. Dive deep into Java and a small bit of Javascript.

23 - After 2nd year of college get taken on an internship with a large multinational where I learn and get hands on experience with Angular, JS, Coffeescript and C#

Present Day - currently coming up to the end of my degree and can switch between Java, C#, Python, Coffeescript/Javascript (front-end or Node) , C and Golang, C and Python introductions from college modules which I kept playing with in my spare time, Golang I just heard of and decided to write a few things in it because why not, I've picked up various frameworks (spring, echo, express etc.) at some point. I basically learn by doing, if something interests me and I enjoy it, I seem to pick it up quickly by diving in and trying to use it.

youtube, youtube and more youtube

When I was a child I was allowed to use my dad's PC (my parents are divorced) (~1995-6, 3-4 yrs) - back then I played blockout and space Invaders on that windows 2.0 machine. My mum later got a win 3.1 box and I often played around in paint - so did I on my dad's new windows 95 pc. Back then I wasn't able to read (which usually isn't uncommon for a 4-5 yr old) but I was so fed up with those constant "do you want to save this thing dialogs" that I started to learn reading with the help of my parents. (Thanks to that I was able to play Monkey Island 2 :D )

Fast forward to the first years of school: we had two PC's in the classroom and I somehow fixed basic errors so my teacher signed.l me up for the computer course in the second year - usually only students in the third and fourth year may attend this course. I was so thrilled and that was the time where I learned basic DOS stuff and how to build a PC. Again fast forward some years to the 6th year - again another teacher saw my interest in it and asked me if I'd be interested in the basic programming course where I then learned basics in HTML, CSS and JS but that was not enough for me and so I did some research and learned php. In high school, my major was science and IT and in the last year, my IT teachers sat in the IT class and I held the courses as my knowledge was greater than theirs. And yep, that's pretty much how I started coding

thenewboston (Love you bucky) and head first - java

Started coding HTML, CSS and JavaScript as part of my multimedia design studies. Lecturer would throw up a simple 960 page on the projector, said "make this" and left the room. Being thrown in the deep end is definitely a way to learn that taught me a lot

I picked up an HTML book for kids when I was about 11. I didn't code again until college. I started as chemical engineering, but that wasn't really my thing.

I decided to take a computer science class and loved every bit of it, so I switched my major to computer engineering. I also started learning LAMP stack development in my spare time.

I was at university, and I didn't really feel like I was understanding C++ or C#, I'd gotten to my final year through two repeated years, skipping the work experience​, practicing as often as I could (even if it wasn't making sense).

In my final year after needing to install windows for the sixth time in a month (sometimes my machine, sometimes friends machines) I got sick of having to install the same utilities over and over again.

So I decided to write a tool to download and install them, also keeping them up to date, I did it in python, teaching myself as I went and it became my final year project! I should have scored 85% but I was marked down for going over the word count.

Apparently I work better on my own and when I've got a problem I need to solve!

I got into programming because I couldn't solve a maths problem I'd been set, so my dad found an emulator for an old language he used to use a bit and managed to brute force it.

From there I went and learnt my first programming language, an unconventional choice of BBC basic 😛

All software sucks, I overheard a colleague say. I used to be proud of what I wrote, but after 20 years I realize that I am never going to write perfect code. It may be good enough, but if that's all, than my colleague may be right. What a relief :)

When I was young I'd play games and around age 11 received an Xbox for my bday. Hated the case, so I painted the case. Since I had it open looked into getting a replacement fan.Thats when everything changed. I discovered the modding scene and without having any computer background/literacy got to studying.

The program that caught my eye ran on Linux. *shrugs thinking how hard can it be? * Read about Linux and discover dual booting. To do that I needed to resize windows partition. Learn more about partitions and get to it. Finally prepped... Backup in case of the worst, resized windows partition, working Ubuntu bootable USB, and printed install tutorial. Check, check, and check. Install was good. Sort of.

While Ubuntu worked, the broadcam wireless chipset driver did not. Fast forward a week and I feel that i had mastered the terminal basics. And WiFi worked! Go download the aforementioned program and FTP into the Xbox and BOOM... It doesn't work. More days and hours spent researching. In the end it all chalked up to not setting a static IP address on Xbox.

After all was said and done I had a bitchin Xbox. I think the only thing I didn't put on it was some gold spinning rims.

Sad part about that Xbox is that I never used it after. Instead I just kept messing around with Linux and learning more about computers. Taught myself HTML/CSS. Learned more about shell scripting. Then Windows cmd basics. Tried programming languages but felt a little overwhelmed. Only messed with <10 lines of code to tweak existing programs.

Now I'm learning C# and loving it. Planning on C++ or Java next!

I had very small experience on programming and applied for a dev Job kind of accidently.
But having good mathematical Background I convinced the Interviewer to give me the chance of learning during an internship. So I started a console Tool for special testing purpose with good success.
After the internship they asked me if I'm willing to lern Javascript and HTML. Though I had a lot of fun there, the answer was easy 😏
Now I'm a senior there having a team of 4-5 devs
And I still enjoy coding a lot 😎
So basically I learned coding during work

Cry, cry, headaches and cry again

Went through a lot of GitHub repositories and other people's codes to try to understand how the "magic" happens. Slowly started getting a hang of it. Good thing being, I picked up good coding practices along the way

I learned coding the best way: While getting paid. I was an Excel junkie (still consider myself as one) and a colleague taught me PHP. This gave me the skills to apply for real programming jobs. Eventually I was hired at a company as a PHP developer who would need to be flexible enough to transition into a C# developer within the next 6 months. It wasn't easy, but after about 8 months and a 1-week course later I was programming in C# .NET with grace. Not looking back at PHP now at all. Naturally, today I can apply for a whole bunch of different jobs that I definitely could not three years ago.

I have the dearth of good programmers to thank for this of course and I am grateful every moment when I understand how lucky I've been.

1-Trying to learn vb6 and failed
2-trying to learn vb.net and failed
3-try to learn asp.net c# then failed
4-web design, failed
5-security, failed
6-network, failed
7-learn how to avoid proctasting
8-learning java and android, and all goes fine

Im started with Lego, with 12 i learned to solder, got interested in computers and ended up learning diverse languages to solve problems.

I started in school and i thought it would be enough. My father convinced me to look into php and i inhaled it. Now, 12 years later, I am a self employed web dev and I teach web development. Thanks dad!

1. Question how programms are actually made
2. By C learning book
3. ?
4. Profit

Part of my job requires me to use SQL in SQL Server and databases and Python and utilising Javascript APIs - so I was thrown in at the deep end. But my fiancé is also an amazing help as a software engineer he helps to spot my errors and encourages me to take on new challenges.

I started fully exploring different aspects of tech in a middle school technology class where the teacher gave me a good grade as long as I did something that could be useful or interesting. I learned how to design webpages by playing with inspect element, and then decided to make my own with Notepad. One of my friends showed me how to use Sublime Text, and I found that I loved programming. Other things I did in there included using two desktops with NIC's wired directly to each other with an old version of Synergy and a VNC server, and at one point, I built a server node out of old dell Optiplex desktops the school had piled in a storage room.

Last year in high school, I took a class on VB.net and made some money afterwards by freelance refreshing legacy spaghetti, and got burned pretty badly by a person offering $25,000 for a major POS to backend CMS integration rewrite. The person told me that I had finished second, and that another dev had gotten the reward, but that he liked my code. A few days later, I was notified through a *cough*very convoluted*cough* system of mine by a trigger that ran once during startup in a production environment and reported the version number as well as a few other bits, and I was able to see that *cough*someone*cough* had been using my code. I stopped programming for at least six months straight because I didn't want to go back.

This year in high school, I'm taking the engineering class I didn't get into last year, and I realized that Autodesk Inventor supports VBA. I got back into programming with a lot of copy-paste and click-once "installers" to get my modelling assignments done faster than my classmates. Last week, one of my friends asked me to help him fix his VB program, which I did, and now I'm hooked again.

I've always been an engineer at heart, but now I'm conflicted with going into I.T., mechanical or robotical engineering, or being a software developer.

A little long, but that's how I got to where I am now. (I still detest those who take advantage of defenseless programmers. There's a special place for them.)

Documentation <-> Implementation.
Stack overflow somewhere in between.

I learned C with a K&R copy a friend gave me years ago. Now at University we in CompSci get taught in Python the first year and Java next while the engineers start with C and (I'm guessing) move on to assembly later on.

This friend comes to me all worried because he has to submit the next day a working Reversi game for the console written in C. Turns out the game was divided among two labs and he failed to submit the first one.

The guy is smart but once a week or so, when we met to smoke a joint and relax with some other friends, he was always talking about how he would prefer something like law but that would be bad business back in Egypt.

Back to the game, I get completely into it. First hour checking all the instructions he was given, then reviewing the code he wrote and copied from Internet. We decide start from scratch since he doesn't really get what the code he copied do. It took us 10 hours only stopping to eat but we get all the specifications of both labs perfectly.

A week after that he comes to me: "my TA said your code is the ugliest shit he's ever seen but he gave me a perfect score because it passed all the tests". I'm getting better (the courses I'm taking help me a lot) but what really made me happy is that he solved the next lab by himself (Reversi wasn't the first time I helped him, only the first time he was absolutely lost). Now he actually gets excited about coding and even felt confident for his programming final.

No more talking about being a lawyer after those 10 hours, totally worth it.

It's been 5 years this month since I started learning programming, getting interested after learning about Linux, wanting to do operating systems and games.

I started with C++, went on to C and assembly language for about 2 years and gave up on it for the most part.

Afterward did Java for two years and hated every second of it! Switched to Python instead (been using it since 2.7.5).

Now I do Haskell and JavaScript and those languages do everything so much easier I can never see myself ever going back!

I started playing Counter-Strike 1.6 at the age of 11. Soon after that, I wanted to own a server. I've managed to create a server in the following weeks but I wasn't happy, I needed custom plugins but I didn't have any programming skills. And that's how the journey started.

I (still am though) taught myself JavaScript online, and taught myself the Linux terminal with no help.

Tried to install WAMP manually to learn PHP. It almost put me off development altogether, but great when it worked and I learnt a lot doing it. The next time I used Xampp before moving on to vagrant & VMs.

Sometimes setting up the Dev environment is the hardest part of learning. But better to learn in dev than production!

University (only the basics) then internship :)

Just started to do something. Then i came accross a problem and googled "How to concentrate strings in C" Found sprintf and strcat, could concentrate strings. And this just with every problem.

var gotGud = false;

while(!gotGud)
{
try
{
makeCode();
gotGud = true;
}
catch(AbilityException ex) { }
}

!rant

I was propably 15 years old the first time i saw my friend coding html and and other related stuff i cannot remember! It intriqued me and i really wanted to learn it (i wanted to learn to hack.. xD..) but at the given time i wasn't happy in life and i was pretty much addicted to WoW..

So.. forward 12 years, where i had gone to the military, thought about becoming a physiotherapist, psychiatrist, korean translator and game designer.. oh and countless attempts from another friend to get me interested in c#.. i decided to start studying computers (software/hardware) at DTU (danish university).

That was rougly 8-9 months ago and i am now pretty decent in C, HTML, C++, Java, MySQL and koncepts about networks and OOP designs :).

I am super grateful to all the trial and errors throughout my life that have brought me to this place :)

Still 27, still has alot to learn, but i am really happy where i am right now. Even so, that i am spending my free time making my own projects :)

I also get super happy whenever i fix a bug of mine :p.

I truly believe that you will skyrocket to succes if you do what you love.

For me, i just discovered that part of myself a little late :)

Not sure what i hope to achieve with this post, but i hope it can give an insight into what people go through and yeah.. go for what you want!

Have a great time everyone!

And first !rant on this app!
I love all your rants! vs !rants

In school i had to do a simple HTML site(i was 13 back then). And i started writting it in guess what... Notepad
Thats how i felt in love with bare code

For me I was so amazed by the fact I could control computers it was pretty much a morning til night thing every day for a month (which happened to be my study leave for exams I didn't want to revise for but hey! I landed a job in dev so
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

At age of 14 me and my friend started writing browser based game.. It was written using php(no DB, as .txt files where our DB) after that I started writing silly little web applications. I have never learned it in uni or any other place...

Start to learn a language
Get distracted by other work for few days
Start over again

When I started, in the early 80's, there was no internet, and books related to programming were hard to come by, so everything had to be learned by going to the library, or reading the manual that came with the compiler. Finally, in the early 90's, I got to attend programmer training in the Air Force. My first successful program was a D&D character generator.

My fascination for programming began around 13, when i started developing plugins for my minecraft server in java.
Had an awesome time with creating plugins for some fully custom servers with relatively large playerbases(50-200 players, depended on the time of the day).
This sparked something in me, and i started creating crapp ass "portfolio" sites for myself with php and mysql login and registration forms. After that I got into some basic c# abd had fun with some cute console/form applications.
And here comes today, in the process of picking up more css, php, html, js knowledge, probably heading towards react or vue.
I just love programming to death.

Expected university to teach me. Find out my expectations were wrong. But I learned how to learn stuff. Now I work on thing that I want and when I stuck, I learn new stuff to overcome. Still don't know much but tryin'

Having great ideas in mind don't know where to begin and I see Iron Man Movie ... AI.. thats it. I want to make it and started with C....(html,css,c#...etc.. ignored)... Jumped to Python.

Had far too sparetime and found out that Wix wasn't making real websites. Found out that a pretty cool tool named "inspector" existed and then I was in. I used all the time I could afford by taking courses, study and get a small job last summer. Then I became a member of devRant aaaaand then my productivity decreased dramatically 😁

Well... My process isn't/wasn't necessarily that refined... It sort of goes like this. "You're stupid and you know nothing." Rinse and repeat.

I learned to program with the joy of the command line and ASCII rocket ships printed and shell games on GWBasic. It was fat spiral bound manual my Dad gave me when he worked at EDS. My dad then tried to press me to leaning a program for calculating prime and perfect numbers. My dad sort of forgot I was only six and hadn't learned division yet.

thenewboston on YouTube; Google, Stack Overflow, and University courses

Everything startest​ with HTML. I got an awesome book about HTML/CSS and I just started learning and trying out some stuff. At the beginning I got a lot of help from my father but soon I created my own websites! I setup a free webserver and after some time, I met PHP. I made tons of stuff with PHP :)

After about 1 year of creating things with PHP, I learned Javascript. And with Javascript I got into game development. I created some games but I wanted more. So I tried Unity Engine. But... well... It was hard. Then I tried Godot Engine and I finally found a game engine wich I enjoy!
I created a lot of games.

Then in 2016 I met Lua, wich is my favourite language now! (But I didn't do much with it)
Later I also met Node.js but I'm still learning :)

In high school I absolutely hated business and science subjects(phy, chem, bio) as well.
Not to forget fucking maths. Calculas and all that shit I never paid attention to.
I chose CS hoping it would rid me of maths.
Fell in love with programming the very first semester.
Now I'm in my last semester and a freelance Web Dev.

Started learning html,css and php after i found out that using templates on wix.com isnt actualy creating websites

Since early 2016 a LinuxDev at my work, pushed me (windows admin) right in the CentOS world. With some practise I had to build a infrastructure to deploy Ubuntu to development clients (laptops with stuff without windows) In perspective I had to migrate this infrastructure to my team (windows admins) and run it there as were this all the time our business. I loved powershell but for some reason I have had to learn Ruby, bash etc.. Now I am the first Admin with some pretty skills in Linux, my workplace comes without any version of Windows. I am flying with Debian, Ubuntu, redhat and CentOS. The finished work from past enabled my team and me to drop fully automated Linux Clients for our developers.

Well last weekend Windows 10 fuc*** up with the creators update and destroyed even my USB3 ports... I didn't even spend lot of my time playing with this machine... So my desk is now running arch.

That day my colleague thought, windows isn't my passion is thanked every week once for directing me in this pretty good world.

Today I am still the first Linux DevOps in my team, but still happy.

Have Pocket app.
Save awesome article/site to Pocket.
Swear to read it later.
Open pocket app after a while.
Shit so much saved.
Can't read all of this no time.
Thus begins the infinite loop.

Trial and error.

Taking an existing code base and playing with it to see what does what. Eventually learning enough to create basic programs. Eventually I wanted to make more complicated things so started reading documentation.

I started by looking at existing code and then began to build my own tools and projects, then rebuilding until eventually I got to where I am at the minute. It's a constant learning process.

We had this social network in Norway, called Nettby (similar to MySpace). Where you could write HTML code on your profile page, and add css of you had a premium membership. That's how my interest for web started. i had no idea what I was doing.

Then I made a website for a LAN-party for my hometown, with booking seats and payment, and the works.

Made my first commercial website a year later, I was 12 at the time. 6000 NOK (underpaid, but for a 12y/o it was a lot of candy)

Fast forward to highschool, teachers say computers are a waste of time, and I'll never be successful in life with that.

Turned 20 a few months back, I run my own corporation, and work at mid-Norway's largest production company (web, 3d, video, graphics)

At some point I was watching a sethbling video about programming mining turtles in a Minecraft mod called computer craft, which uses a reimplementation of lua with some mod specific functions. This inspired me to learn lua, then as I got bored with that I started moving through different languages until I settled on primarily kotlin and rust

When i was around 13, I wanted to make video games. Didn't know much about how to code and stuff but it got me into Ruby and Python.

But I actually properly learned how to program in my uni's first semester because I wanted to sleep in my professor's class so I pulled two all nighters to speed up my pace. Was worth it.

I made a small program with visual studio and try and error without any programming knowledge, then read a whole c# book, then try and error again

My school had computer as a subject from 6th standard. The first language I learnt was logo.

Well... I guess I started learning how to program so many years back when I thought I could fix my girlfriend's mood swings with code. Guess what: we are married now and I'm still learning how to program!

I learnt a lot of my java background from Minecraft modding. I even went back a couple years ago when I was learning python and used the Minecraft python api to make my learning a little more interactive.

I'm​ always trying to find cool ways to apply programming to my hobbies, and hacking / modding / breaking the games I play it's a hell of a lot of fun and drives me to learn more

My father bought a keyboard connected to screen and both working together as computer, that was computer full of video games... One of this games idea was writing code to control the hero movement... Then I started to write codes...

I am mostly self-taught. If I am (really) interested in doing something new, or if I feel there is a need of doing something, I just do it. Simple.
Learnt a great deal by looking at others' codes (like how things are done, conventions etc), tinkering with the IDE, working on personal projects etc.

Paid for a private school in my country (France) cause public isn't so great.
After 3 years, realize that it was more bullshit than school so continue to paid until the last year to get diploma.
At the end, I was on Udemy to buy lessons and learn. Was way much cheaper than my school but since it's hard here without diploma, I had to finish scholarship...

I was in uni and the lecturer used visual studio 95 and i had 2015 and kept getting errors.when i asked him what was wrong with my code he just told me look for it i wont tell you.i bet he didn't even know.so i just learn through YouTube and other tutorial sites.

Not university. I hate the whole stigma behind university and that the only way to have a successful career is by getting a degree. I started learning myself by just googling stuff when i was 11 and was more interested in it when i grew older and was about 15 when i started watching a lot of YouTube tutorials, reading online articles and made a GitHub account. The best way to learn is by having passion for it, knowledge will come itself as long as you're determined to achieve.

1. Reading eBook “Beginners in vb6”
2. Made a calculator with vb6 to help me in Math homework
3. Made few other desktop apps on vb6 for fun
4. Got interested in Websites so started with WYSIWYG Microsoft FrontPage
5. Started learning frontend and backend coding from WYSIWYG Dreamweaver (HTML, CSS, jQuery, MySQL and PHP)
6. Then custom coding on Sublime. Made around 6 side projects (HTML, CSS, jQuery, MySQL and PHP)
7. Started learning core JavaScript and followed by other programming languages
8. Interest came in making Android and iOS apps. I learnt Java and Swift for it
9. Now I span between Web and Mobile Apps

Dad was (and is) a technic freak, I played as kid with electronics instead of toys.
I'm always interested to modify things to feel more individual (Own Skins in game, modding, ...)

This and the love to games (-> "I wannaa make my own videogame daddy") developed into a curious computer science student working at IBM that loves to learn anything related to it and I'm so freaking happy about it! ☺️

Even though I really started coding like 4 1/2 years ago and coded in c++ and c, i consider js as my real first language.
In one week, I worked through w3schools, to teach myself the basics.
Later on i started downloading library examples and tried to creatively destroy them.
Now, when I have to work with libraries, i often find myself in looking through their code.

I read a book on Object Oriented Concepts, oddly it wasn't part of the required reading material while i was in UNI but i had a class in 'vb.net' and 'advance vb.net' in my second year, my dad told me to read that book and said everything would make sense, he wasn't kidding. i understand OO so well that only thing i learn now is just the syntax of a language I want to pick up that's how i switched to c#, learned java and python. ALSO YouTube and Lynda.com helped😎

Wrote pseudo-code on paper for a year in high school. Didn't understand anything

Next year, realised what the pseudo codes meant in Visual Basic

So, in "learning" programming I took some classes in school and got a start in the academic sense. But, as professors would assign projects above the position of the class I would have to learn elsewhere. So I attribute my learning to code to Stack Overflow and Google searches.

I literally was fucking around in Python thinking I was doing some good, learned basics, kept switching languages, read about two books that did teach me a lot of stuff, stopped jumping between languages, still reading books, still learning, internet, exercises, books... YouTube had like 8% of participation in my learning process (Which is still going)

Wanted to cheat in RuneScape(Maybe not the best of ideas. But I was in 8th grade. And teen popularity was a glimmer in my eye). No good scripts. Learnt Java to cheat.

Started learning php from youtubeversity.. then started teaching kids php, helps you alot too (to teach)..
Then I started at the University.. eh, its easy mode, when you already learned object oriented programming ..

Youtube, stackoverflow, looking through other people's code, editing it, breaking it, fixing it and various tutorials really helps alot.
Still where I get my information, not the University. But it depends on which type of person you are

I started learning programming by downloading phpnuke and tearing apart the source code. Before WordPress became popular there was phpnuke :) Google it you youngsters

I started in Lua in a program called AMS (it made autorun programs but has full scripting support making it pretty powerful) making little software applications.

That evolved into PHP and shortly after JS, HTML and CSS.

After a while i added other languages and it continues to grow today.

The UI aspect has just been something i have always had an eye for.

YouTube

What IS your process to learn to program? FTFY.

I started in school when I wanted to know what the world behind drag and drop was and how people could make machines work on a basis of words on a screen.

Wk49 - Started by learning the basics from a C# book when I was around 14, then found a project I thought would be fun and started programming. My logic worked but wasn't the most efficient, but as I found more projects to do, my skills got better.

I'm now a full time programmer for a large company, I don't have any formal qualifications but now studying MTA.

You don't need uni to get a job in programming, just a passion for learning and patience.

Originally I learned by following code edits on the eclipse engine. Back in the day...

I started at age 13 with Delphi 6 and HTML.

When I got to high school, I started learning Java from friends who were in programming class. Started out as a comp sci major in college and got sick of it, so I switched to a digital art degree. Got interested in Java again for the creation of art and music using generative processes. Then I got into web dev and JavaScript. Years later, still learning new programming concepts and making digital art on the side.

I was on my fifth year of college (Economics & Business) when I decided that's not what I wanna do in life. So I started to learn programming from online tutorials and had huge help from my bf. Now I have a job where I get to code and learn even more. Still have a long way to go though, but I'm really excited about it.
To bad I wasted five years of my life on Economics 😅

In highschool I started by setting up an open tibia (OT) server for which I copied and edited lua scripts to create spells and quests. Didn't do anything remotely difficult in those times.
In university I needed to learn and use Prolog. And soon after that I had an OOP course in Java. Didn't really learn Java during that course. And started to accept I would never like real programming.
During a Datastructures course I actually got the hang of java and started to program in my spare time.
Finished the Datastructures course with a good grade which landed me a job as student assistant for a python course.
That job in turn landed me a part-time job as python developer where I learned most of my programming skills.
Now I'm back to working in Java and I still learn everyday.

All of my programming knowledge (more like 95% of it) have been gathered by myself. I've started learning during secondary school - the basics everyone has to go through. But it was so awesome that I wanted more. So I've started digging through vast space of internets and books only to find that I know very little. I've had help in the university and high school (the other 5%), but it wasn't enough.

The best thing is - the feeling has never worn off. And I still want more, because it feels like learning magic - the only difference is magic doesn't exist 😃

What was your process to learn to code?
I started out modding Pokemon games for the good old Gameboy Advance around the age of 11. With basic scripts like; walk 3 steps left etc.

After that starten to use Unity 3D (with C#), just copy everything from Google. After a while I could edit some scripts and stuff (painful process...).

I started to do a study Software Engineering, didn't learn that much, just got some errands and little projects from people (the usual, 'oh you can code, I need bla bla) learned pretty much most of my skills there (JavaScript, python, PHP). In the meantime creating games (C#, C++).

Did an internship in game dev. got a job now. Only a bit more that a year from now I have my degree (if everything is going to plan).
That is more or less my process of learning to program.

Reinvent the wheel. Rewrite. Just do it.

When I was 15, I started learning Python solely from the Internet, directly from Python's own tutorial in their documentation actually. Never had actual "formal" programming lessons till I was in university, which tbh, sucks. I'd learn more at a faster pace if I went to the Internet... If only I'm not lazy... 😅

sams teach yourself c in 21 days
i printed all 600 or so pages from the pdf and practiced a whole summer during high school

Didn't know how to program but enrolled in a master's degree that needed that. So I attended the programming courses of the bachelor's degree that gave me just enough knowledge and just in time to save my ass writing a Hadoop MapReduce program! And I actually did well. All Java though.

These days I am banging my head against the wall learning Rust.

I had a logistical problem at my cnc job. Went to java. Then python. Then webdev with freecidecamp. Soon I'll have my certification as a front end and a I'll go on with back end. During this I make python script to make my wifes business easier to maintain and I want to start developing android apps soon. I'm 30 btw. I hope it's not too late... :)

Read the official documentation of the program....so only learns from top to bottom....

I got into dev during the AOL 2.5 days where everyone was creating proggies and punters. I was obsessed with the AOL API designed for Visual Basic (VB4 at the time).

So essentially I got into dev to break shit and make peoples lives miserable. Good times.

My path into development started with my dad. He was a COBOL programmer and would bring his work home to debug by hand. He would explain his thinking and programming concepts as he went through his code.

I then got into Basic, and Visual Basic 6.0 (right before .NET). In high school CS I and CS II consisted of VB.NET and Java, but it also solidified some foundational concepts I was missing; binary, hex, flow charts, etc.

After that though, everything else was self exploration and trial and error. It all came together. I love my path, and it brought me here to devRant via the programming friends I have made along the way.

Started by working on centOS to make it work on my PC. At first it was just look on the internet and change values, then i found this great thing called manuals and documentation.
Soon after I learned I could modify some files to change the behaviour of the system, write my own extensions. And before I knew I was HOOKED!

I took a Diploma course just before my graduation started because I was coming from a non IT background (Business and Accountancy) from a local institute. And the owner of the institute personally taught me C and C++. I had done some C in my school but it was just Printf and Scanf. And that man, taught me that the best way to write a program is to imagine it as a story. Since its C, so its all about functions and shit, so he made me understand that why a particular thing needed its own functionality. He inspired me to find the why. I learned that its important to keep the how in your perspective, but always have the why before how. This thought process made me feel that, since then, I've only learned newer ways to write the program, but my basic understanding still focuses on why.
:D

When I was little, my father told me about this thing he did when he was younger, he could tell a computer what to do, programming, and he promised me one day he'll teach me how to do it myself, but that day never came. A few years later, at age 10, I went to a "technology" summer camp, where one topic was programming in Processing, and I was really excited to do it, so excited and interested, that the place where I did I'd accepted me in their Coderdojo​ without having to wait the list (kinda cheating).There I learned Processing for three years, and how to use GitHub, until last year I decided to become a "teacher" myself (the topics we dealt with were really basic, and there were only beginners).
Other things I did is showing the people of my class how to program in TI-BASIC with our schools calculators, because, as they say, teaching is the best way to learn.
This course we started informatics at school, but the teacher isn't really an expert, and the few things he knows (apart from php4) I teached him.
I'm now constantly learning new things by Googling them and setting high goals for myself.

Is there a site/service for teenager who program to team up for projects?

When I was a child, I always sat next to my father when he was working with his computer. After going to school, I spent most of my time in our computer site and learned how to start programming from its manager.

In 2011,when i was 12, i was playing Garry's Mod with a couple of friends, and i don't remember the circunstance, but one of my friends said: "I wonder how games i made". I have no idea why i was never curious about this subject before,since i played A LOT of videogames, but this question did stick to my mind, so i decided that i would search about it. Searching, i discovered that Garry's Mod used the Source engine, and that it was made in LUA. Tried LUA. Understood very little. Lost my interest. And then, i would only attempt to program again back in 2015, where i learned C++ in high school. Then i learned SQL, and now learning Java. I also discovered that i LOVE programming, and now i have plans to graduate on CS.

I was aspired to be a graphic designer back then when I was in primary school, playing with all the fancy Photoshop filters. Then I got sick of static images, move on to Flash (just before it died violently). I self learn the ActionScript by myself and fall in love with programming. Not the usual language to begin with, but it kinda form my basis in OOP concept.

I still have that thick ActionScript 3.0 bible with me. Keeping it so I can always remember the first time I broke my geeky virginity.

Not so much learn to program, as learn to program in a new language:
As an intern I continually have people around me asking favours in the IT company I work for.
One day the lead of marketing comes in saying our website isn't responsive. She asked if I could work with html, CSS etc. to fix it... And offered me an entire pizza if I could get it done by the next day.
Needless to say, I now have a free pizza waiting for me.

By god knows what means I ended up at a computer science university where I had to take this exam where I had to know programming and...I ended up loving it

I keep an eye on new popular technologies. In particular, I try to spot it's primary use case.

Then whenever I start a new personal project I pick whichever technology that suits it best (even ones I have never used before) and do everything I can to make it work.

Learning about the basic syntax, then making a simple project with help from stack overflow and the documentation.

I started learning to programming when my dad introduced me to it, I then just started teaching myself and learning via trial and error. Started in C#, went to web (learnt HTML, CSS, JS) then started on SASS and CoffeeScript, after that went to C and C++, then started looking at Angular, and now I'm on Ruby.

And every project from these languages has at least 10 errors -.-

I "programmed" (or better changed code) long before I even knew this is programming. I basically changed levels in gorillas and nibbles back then during my DOS time thru trial and error by looking and guessing what was written there in the BASIC files. I basically used goto alot 😂.
Later I copied code listings from computer magazines that never worked but took days to type down. My first real programming experience where I bought a much to expensive book and went through it front to back was Java 1.1 or 1.2 ( don't know exactly anymore but it was no later than 1.2) and I learned it because there was this guy that told me about it and I wanted to find out what he was talking about.

When starting primary school, my parents got me a low-spec Pentium 4 with Windows 98. I was fascinated and started learning many things in MS Office. This led to small adventure-like games in PowerPoint.

I quickly found the limits of PowerPoint and started to dive into C++ at around 10. I never made a game, but only because I experienced how unlimited the possibilities are you have when you know how to write software and this realisation kept me motivated to learn more and more things.

My first experience was when I found old book about visual basic. Many years after that I was thinking that every language has a magic function to sort array. But normal coding expirience i've got when some day me and my friend decided to create a game. And after 2 years of development - ta da, I knew how to code.

Falling into a programming course without knowing a thing about computer. Busting my head while i was learning the basic and the lessons of the course together

I would purchase a udemy course and grind away. I still do this today. In my option one of the best resources to learn new programming languages.

I discovered you could edit the Visual Basic code in MS Access. I would read the code that was in there and figure out how i could extend it to do what i want. first code i ever wrote was a switch statement to control whether a set of buttons were enabled based on a dropdown value.

By starting the company I think I just dissolved, perfect opportunity to start a new one... Software company name suggestions anyone