How old were you when you wrote your first line of code?

I was 44. Three years later I'm learning Javascript and Rust.

Started by adding Powershell Write-Host statements to the QA automation so when it barfed we'd at least have a clue as to which part of the script(s) to fix.

Then progressed to automating virtual machine setups using Powershell, Terraform, Ansible and the various cloud CLI's.

If anyone's reading these replies and thinking "everyone answering was in their teens when they started, I'm screwed" take heart. I thought only super intelligent people with some sort of special gift for maths could be programmers... I did an art degree ;)

Turns out it's like everything else. Be genuinely interested in the topic, have a need to get something done and PRACTICE.

14-15. It was a language called C-Script. C-Script was a scripting language built for A4 3d GameStudio made by some German company. I tried to make video games back in the day and realized how much of a chore that really is.

C-Script later got replaced by Lite-C, a super set or maybe a library (not sure how exactly it worked) of C++. Lite-C you could write any valid C++ as well as Gamestudio's own library of code (so maybe it was a superset like Typescript is to JavaScript, I don't remember.)

Haven't touched it in years though. I have Unity and I know C# but I haven't gotten back into game dev, simply because I remember how much work it was.

QBasic at 11 or 12 I guess.
I started by modifying Textadventures and did all kinds of BEEP-stuff with the piezo-speaker. The most "complex" thing I started was what today is called a "Rougelike". I could control a figure and it even had a second room :-3

12 QBasic. I wrote a program that would randomly draw lines of varying sizes and colors on screen. I also remember combing through the source code to the Gorillas game and just copying and pasting various snippets to try and figure out what they do. Fast forward 25 years, and I still find myself copying and pasting various snippets of code to try and figure out what they do 😆

8 or 9.

I'd wanted video games to play, but my parents were pretty strict, so instead of letting me get e.g. Age of Empires, my dad handed me a floppy disk with a bunch of QBASIC games on it and told me "if you want to play video games so badly, build your own".

I spent a lot of time reverse engineering the games, which back then was easier IMO since the source code was immediately available when you started the game. Then I started by modifying the existing games, then slowly building my own (mostly text based) games.

23, sure I had written code before to courses in college, but when I start programming for the sake of programming I was 23 YO, I remember the I started reading a "For Dummies" book about css, html and javascript, that also happens to have php included great book at the time by Andy Harris

I was 17 or 18 and was in college. First language was Turbo C(2008); then I forgot everything. Fast forward to today, first program I wrote was a Twitter Bot in Python.

🐣 12 years old on a Z80 using assembly, we would identify the error message buffers and insert rude words.

We had to load the OS every time from a cassette tape (a last century method of transporting sound information)

I was in middle school programming what I thought was the only way.

using batch files, GOTOS, help, and pure trial and error on windows xp

• I didn't have access to the internet, or know what I would even search for on ask.com
• I didn't know what "programming" was. I thought I was doing hacking 😎
• I spent a full week figuring out the correct syntax to get user input
• I tried every single command available to CMD and read every single help output for each command.

I ended up making a simple math games, random scripts that made it look like I was actually hacking (fake blue screens of deaths), changing the CMD thru rainbox colors, play Star wars thru telnet, etc.

It wasn't until college I realized I had no idea what I was doing at the time 😄 but the experience did give me a good idea that I'd go into "Computer Science" when I got older haha

I believe I was around 9 or 10 when I discovered Microsoft Front Page on a Windows 95 machine. One of my first projects was just a simple HTML website that linked a bunch of search engine and gaming sites together.

O how I wish I had a copy of the small projects I made. Would be fun to compare and look at now.