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Discussion on: Were you born to be a developer?

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Douglas McKechie • Edited

I don't know if I was "born" to be a developer, but I did start coding from a youngish age - 14 in the mid 90s - mostly copying QBasic code listings out of books from the local library and then altering then to see what happened.

I then got a copy of VB4 later in the 90s and self taught some windows app development, in this case mostly trying to create copies of windows games I liked, such as Chip's Challenge.

I also always enjoyed playing with the level editor / modding tools in games and creating my own maps or scenarios.

At Uni I think this did give me an advantage, I had been exposed to coding before, it was not a completely new and strange thing as it was for some students on the courses I took, so I always got good marks in those papers.

Do I feel like I am ahead of my colleagues because of it? No. I just had a chat with a few devs in the team here and some did start programming when young, others learned it when they did their course at Uni etc, but I think all of us are quite skilled in what we do.

So just because I fiddled around making some games when I was a kid does not make me way better web developer today than my colleagues. That said I suppose these days exposure to coding at a young age cannot hurt and may be helpful if kids want to go on to be developers in the IT industry.