This question has been floating around in my head for a while. I know I wasn't, I'm the kind of guy that likes to try everything, I'm just genuinely curious about lots of things and I feel like I am at least decent at them.
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same!
Nobody is born to be anything.
I am a 15 year old still. All my life I've had the issue of not being interested in anything this world has to offer. I wouldn't read books if I didn't know if they were good (aka I rarely tried new books). I spent my time trying to waste as much as possible. I knew drawing wasted maybe 20 minutes (I wasn't good at it), so sometimes I just drew stuff.
But programming really is my one true interest. Discovered it at 11, and just never stopped.
It was a bit mixed with me.
I feel like I started a bit earlier than most devs I know, but I have the feeling that I'm not as smart as most devs.
I hope I make up missing intelligence by being more passionate than the average dev and having a bit of a head start, lol.
I bought my first computer, a C64, with 8. I played around a bit with BASIC, but didn't build anything much more advanced than a "hello world" with it.
Later I got a PC, when I was 11 or something, and did basically nothing coding related till I was like 14. Then I started doing some scripting and mapping (which also included scripting) for games like Duke Nuken 3D and Halflife. I also did some simple games with Flash, but nothing too big. I was more into the whole administration stuff back then. Build PCs, setup OS, tweaked the OS for games, setup some FTP servers and stuff for filesharing.
Wrote some IRC bots in mIRC-Script when I was 16 and did some websites in HTML/CSS in that year.
Later I tried some web stuff in PHP, guess when I was like ... I don't know 19 or so.
Got my first internship as web developer when I was 21.
First started thinking of programming in the first year of my university. My speciality is Information Security, but i didn't like the program so bad (there was no coding whatsoever), that i decided to start learning programming myself. Python as a friends recommendation, then freecodecamp, then i decided that i am into web development. Sieged Udemy and started eating frontend courses one after another. Currently learning React, still have no job, but whatever - i will struggle through.
I started coding when I was almost 17, I never though that I was born for that, I just wanted to study something related with computers and I realised that I sucked. At the beginning it was hard for me learning to code, 10 years later I think that I figured out how it works ;) and I'm still learning
We're all still learning 🙂
Nope, definitely not. I wanted to be a doctor ever since I was a kid, but when I went to Highschool, I found out it took forever to become one...and a lot of money. My parents were getting old (they still are), so I just chose anything. I was into MMORPGs at the time, so I opted for Computer Science (LOL)!
Good for me that I ended up liking my profession anyway. :)
I wrote my first program on 4th grade(10 years of age) in QBASIC while I was at school and I enjoyed playing it as a kid. The idea that I can write a program to make a computer find the HCF which the teacher had taught last week, when many people I look up to, including my parents, had no clue on how to operate this expensive thing which is called a 'Computer', was very exciting for this reason alone 🙂. And simply because I enjoyed it, the idea of making a computer do intelligent things, by typing sentenes partly english and math, stayed in my head from that time onwards and I had always tried to do it again whenever I could get my hands on a computer.
Today I work as a software engineer and I have often felt that because I played around with a programming language as a kid, I have had an advantage over many of my colleagues while learning a new technology or a language. I feel that thinking of a solution on abstract terms and implementing it in a language can never be a problem if we were familiar with code from childhood.
I started writing code in FORTRAN at age 9, at the same time I started learning and living in English, my second language. I didn't have a computer until age 14, so I need to write a lot of code on paper, though I could use a shared Apple ][ at a local department store at age 13, in 1978. So my first real experience of running and crashing code was at age 13, with Apple ][ 6K BASIC and the 6502 Assembler. My first C language experience was at age 20. My first real production level C++ and C# language experiences have begun at age 52 :), so I still need to learn a lot of things anyway.
Starting learning things at an early age has a distinct advantage. It will reduce unnecessary fear. Childhood experience is much easier to repeat at the later period of life. I still don't want to say, however, that I was born to be a dev. Writing code is essential part of my life, but that's not the only way to live it :)
Having learned old way of coding or problem solving can be an advantage sometimes, especially if you need to fix old equipment or a legacy piece of code. I don't think I'm ahead of my colleagues though because they know modern tools far better than I do. I know I need to learn a lot of GUI tools and Web design, and I'm in the process now.
It's nice to be able to earn some money by doing something I'm good at and like since my childhood, but that doesn't necessarily mean I don't have to learn new things; in fact, I always have to learn new things. It's hard, but fun. :)
I think starting early can definitely give you an edge but I dont think that is all you will need in the long run. It can just give you a headstart naturally. I started when I was 15 and compared to some, it is still like >= two years late.