How did you get into programming in the first place?

I decided to make my daily routine faster.

On LinkedIn my job description was front end manager at a supermarket and ever so often LinkedIn would email me possible positions I would be perfect for. One hiccup though, these possible job opportunities were for front end developers not actual managers at supermarkets LOL.

You can imagine my face after reading the details of these front end postions... "The heck is HTML", "Javascri who??" 0_o. So one day out of curiosity I spent a few hours really researching front end development and I was instantly consumed by it. By the following week I was already messing with HTML and CSS and building my first webpage.

Now one year later, I'm pursing a degree in computer/software eng and I'm also building my first web app with Ruby and the Sinatra framework.

That's my odd story :D.

I was 14 and my crush was a computer science/programming major back in high school (it was a vocational high school).

This seems to be more of a life story, but don't worry, I'm not that old. I started playing with computers when I was around 9. I used to use my dad's work laptops. I kept breaking things, including corrupting the OS on numerous occasions. In the fear of being yelled at,
I anxiously spent hours trying to fix it and, eventually, succeeding. This gave me my problem solving skills.

I liked browsing the Internet and going on websites. I wanted one of my own. On my 10th birthday, my dad bought me my own domain name, because that's what all the cool 10 year old 90s kids wanted. I learnt HTML and CSS mostly, and built my terrible static entertainment website. I experimented Geocities, if you remember that gem ha.

In my mid teens, I discovered PHP and MySQL databases. I created some beautiful XSS/SQL Injection-prone forms, such as simple article/comment system. I later lost a little interest and got lazy, but as I went to study Computer Science, I re-gained my interest in programming, or rather making cool things by creative means. There's so many cool projects I could have done, but didn't, a few years ago. However, now I'm working for a great software company, building up my front end skills and confidence levels after a long spell of imposter syndrome.

I used to code up my own profile on Myspace, but I had NO idea I was doing HTML and CSS. While I was working Casino Security, a vendor randomly suggested that I look up code.org and start learning how to code. He saw that I was good with computers and unhappy with my job. Eventually, I ended up on Codecademy where I learned the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I loved it! But I wasn't job-ready. I enrolled in a bootcamp a few months ago. It was the best decision I ever made!

Multi-slide projectors placed in racks (at least 2 pointing to each screen) ..."programmed" to dissolve/advance in synch with sound track using such devices:
stevenmichelsen.com/AVL/AVL_Show_P...
stevenmichelsen.com/AVL/AVL_coyote...

And later on DOS.

Then Macromedia Authorware (which wasn't much different than scratch)--but it had multimedia drivers to control laserdisk and later digital video and CDROM etc.
ascilite.org/archived-journals/e-j...

That was sort of eaten by Macromind/Macromedia Director (language was "Lingo").

Then Flash/ActionScript 1, 2, 3 (which was like Java)

Now JS.

In 2005 when I was 8 my father bough a desktop for his work and I was fascinated by computers so I played some games and did some PowerPoint things until summer 2008 when I knew from my mom and dad, who both are Civil Engineers, that they did some programming back in college in early 90s so I decided to be an engineer and learn programming which led to my first program ever written in BASIC.
Now, I'm 21 y/o and studying Electrical Engineering and have programmed in VB.Net then moved to C# which I did some desktop and UWP apps using it and since 2015 I am programming Arduinos and RPis with C/C++, C#, Python.

Partly because I was always interested in it, and partly because I needed some direction in my life. I dropped out of college where I was studying economics. Then, I was just filling my time with some jobs I didn't enjoy and didn't want to get better at.

I needed a career that I could enjoy while working on skills that I could always improve. Because I always thought that it would be pretty cool to learn how to program, I started by picking up a book about C, which I quickly gave up :D . Then, I signed up for the free trial on Treehouse and started the front-end development track. I was 23, it was 2 years ago, and it was the best decision I've made so far.

So, outside of the sense of urgency of picking a career, I would say that the feeling of having no limits in what you can learn, improve, work on or dream about is absolutely what go me into programming

Always loved video games and I have always been very curious about how people where making them.
At 16 I started programming video games with my best friend in C.
I fell in love with code and discovered C++ a few years later at college.
After Giving up with the video game industry (great hobby, very harsh job imo), I am now working in a startup called Therapixel on changing the face of radiology - obviously in C++ ;)

In high school I was in programming club. I was fascinated by computers and code. But my family wanted me to be either a preacher or a doctor, depending on who you asked.

I went to college in 1999 majoring in Theater, no wait I mean Neuroscience for 3 years... But wait, English... Yeah English is what I graduated with. Then I was just lost for a few years after school. Working small jobs, etc.

Then I landed a job at a major insurance company. I did well, and my programming skills and love of programming came back with a vengeance. I was automating all the things everywhere that I could. Pretty soon I got in trouble for that, turns out big companies don't enjoy what they call 'shadow IT'. However they did like what the results of my work, so they gave me a sandbox and I kept working.
It wasn't long after that I officially moved to a dev role. I had to learn .NET which was a great investment. Now I'm in web dev and this is the career I want.

A game on my Schneider 6128 annoyed me so I learned assembly and increased my life count to 255.😉

I failed to get into the federal college in Brazil as a history major, so my dad said and I quote "Don't go on thinking you gonna sit on your ass all day, tomorrow you'll find a job". I knew how to fix a computer so I started working with tech support, one day I was offered an opportunity to work with html and I asked a friend if he could teach me in one weekend, he said "sure" that was 13 years ago. Never looked back.

Started programming when i was 12 to automate level grinding on an online game, that moved to getting involved in building a private server of the game with a few other people. The natural flow of those two led to a marketplace for these "scripts" where i made my first sale of software.

Fast forward 6 years and i had started off as a 1st line technical support phone guy, I was still actively developing in my spare time so looking into ways i could make my job easier. Ended up building a load of php/bash scripts that allowed me to automate 90% of the fixes i needed to do (was a niche platform that the helpdesk provided support for). It was soon noticed by management and i escalated up to a tester.

Jump forward another year and i had a new job as a 2nd line support guy for a small company, the company saw potential and i got my first 'developer' gig by building an automation platform for one our our existing large clients. Then just grew from there. Now i run a team of 8 developers working with some of the largest companies in the UK.

Started programming when i was 12 to automate level grinding on an online game, that moved to getting involved in building a private server of the game with a few other people. The natural flow of those two led to a marketplace for these "scripts" where i made my first sale of software.

Fast forward 6 years and i had started off as a 1st line technical support phone guy, I was still actively developing in my spare time so looking into ways i could make my job easier. Ended up building a load of php/bash scripts that allowed me to automate 90% of the fixes i needed to do (was a niche platform that the helpdesk provided support for). It was soon noticed by management and i escalated up to a tester.

Jump forward another year and i had a new job as a 2nd line support guy for a small company, the company saw potential and i got my first 'developer' gig by building an automation platform for one our our existing large clients. Then just grew from there. Now i run a team of 8 developers working with some of the largest companies in the UK.

This is actually a bit of a weird story. I was playing Minecraft about 5 years ago with the mod called ComputerCraft. This mod enabled users to write lua code to interact with the Minecraft world (turning redstone on and off, actually display GUIs using monitors). I was so amazed by the possibilities of programming that I kept doing it. I always wanted this component in my study and it was between computer science and bioinformatics. I chose bioinformatics purely because it had two worlds combined: natural sciences and programming.

To this day I already passed 2 out of 4 years of this study and still enjoying it very much!