So I thought I'd share my personal experience of when and how I started coding. I'm sure everyone has a different story. But this mine.
Before it all
I guess my first coding experience was when I was around 8yo. My brother and I got an Atari 65XE
If you're old as balls like me you'll remember these types of computers. Games were on tape and took about an hour to load...and god forbid you walked, sneezed or breathed around it whilst it was loading. Other wise your hour long wait would start again.
Anyway...
For you young'uns, there was no graphical operating system. Just a console. The instructions for the Atarti had some code solutions in the back. I remember, painstakingly typing these in. If you got it wrong and it didn't work you had to start typing it All OVER AGAIN. But if you got it right, you were rewarded with something like a green dinosaur, made up of massive pixels.
So this is an example of the code you could write.
Beautiful right?!...😬
I didn't see this as coding at the time. Just a thing to complete.
Fast forward to adulthood
I hadn't done anything remotely techy at all since the Atari. It took me till about 26ish years old to get a computer in my house. I wasn't interested in owning one before then.
My brother fell on some hard times and came to live with me. His friend was selling his old computer so my brother suggested we buy it AND get internet. (That's right. I didn't even have internet at this point)
Side Note!
My brother has a YouTube Channel! Why not go have a watch and maybe give him a follow. Its comedy but he also cooks 🤷♂️😂
Chris the butcher
Warning! He has a mouth like a trucker
Anyway...we bought the computer..
Although i didn't even think about programming at this point, it peaked my interest in computers.
...also lead to me sitting up all night playing Max Payne and paying for it severely the next day!
Fast Forward a year (maybe less)
I met, who is now my wife, Laura. After dating a good while we decided to get married. Ya know...seal the deal. So she was working hard planning EVERYTHING.
what could I do?
Well. I randomly thought...
I know!
I'll make a website for it!
I had no experience at all and all I knew was a friend earning a little cash once making a website in Microsoft publisher! 😬
So that's where I was going to start!
generate or nothing
MS Publisher gives you a drag and drop way of making anything, including websites. But you could also drag a code block in. At first I wasn't even remotely interested in this feature. But the more i went on i wanted to add "cool" features.
I got it in my head that I would want guests to be able to RSVP to the wedding on the site. I had no idea/awareness of server side code. I just thought. I'll Google it when i come to that bit.
My first priority at this point was to create a form for people to login. Then another form to RSVP and give any dietary info.
So I found a html form generator online.
But for some reason, rather than copy and paste, I decided to type the code that was generated. I immediately loved seeing that code turn into something on the screen...
...I was hooked
I even started making something in my work for accessing email templates. This was a massive MS publisher file though and quickly became a nightmare to maintain.
Explain it to me like I'm a dummy year old
I wanted to learn more. Suddenly doing it in MS publisher
- felt like cheating
- was slow when you got a lot in there
So I looked around for a book or something to help me. I stumbled across Html, CSS and javascript for Dummies.
This seemed like a great fit for me 🙈😂
This book became my bible. I carried it everywhere. until one day...I scrapped my MS Publisher projects, opened up notepad and started actually coding.
I felt like "real" programmer from this point. I didnt feel like I was cheating.
the game changer
There was a php and mysql section in the book. I had no idea about databases and server side programming. I always used websites where I could login and see content that was just for me. Rather than a static site where everyone saw the same. When I started html, css and javascript I wondered how it was done. This part of the book opened my eyes.
From there I finally created a website for mine and my wife's wedding. Guests of the wedding were sent passwords with their invite. They would login and be able to rsvp for themselves as well as their family members that were also invited and pick any dietary needs. The site also had a gallery on it. To show pictures of our engagement party and eventually the wedding.
Unfortunately, this site was hacked after the wedding and the hacker deleted everything. Kindly leaving his email address to put everything back for a fee 😒
He also placed some very curious php files on there and some db entries referring to them. So i deleted the whole site. But it didn't deter me in the slightest.
After this, I carried on learning. I took a special interest in C#. I love this programming language and its served me well over the years. I still use php too. Mainly because linux hosting is so damn cheap 😂
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