DEV Community

Sai gowtham
Sai gowtham

Posted on

How long have you been programming?

Top comments (45)

Collapse
 
kayis profile image
K

Hard question. :D

The first time, I think, was on my first computer, a C64. I tried some BASIC, but only simple arithmetic stuff. This was 1994.

I didn't code until 2002, when I tried some Flash, PHP and Half-Life modding.

In high-school, I had two classes on programming. One about C for two years and one about assembler for one year. This was 2002.

The first programming job I had in 2006, where I cobbled together some PHP pages.

Collapse
 
adnanrahic profile image
Adnan Rahić

Woah... I was born in '94. 😁
Started coding in college 4 years ago, dropped out, started coding for money 3 years ago, and now I'm a Developer Advocate. So I basically talk about coding... for money. 😐

Collapse
 
kfecho30 profile image
Kelsey Fecho

That's so interesting--how did you land that job?

Thread Thread
 
kayis profile image
K

Yes, it is! I thought about doing dev-advocacy too, but I don't even know where to start :D

Thread Thread
 
adnanrahic profile image
Adnan Rahić

How did you land that job?

Well, to be honest, it was a 2 year journey. I started writing about coding and built up a following on Medium. This was followed by actively contributing to my local dev community and teaching programming courses. I started speaking at Meetups on a regular basis, ultimately organizing and hosting them myself.

All of this contributed to technical knowledge, writing prowess and people skills, which are crucial if you want to be a Developer Advocate.

(Feel free to message me directly if you want a more detailed explanation.)

Collapse
 
cheetah100 profile image
Peter Harrison

In 1981 I got my first computer, the ZX81. I typed in computer programs from magazines and modified them to do new things, learning to program. In high school I wrote a messaging system for the students on the BBC Micros. By 19 I had moved to the PC and was running my own bulletin board using software I had written in GWBASIC.

Here is a interview I did several years ago for DownToTheWire, a Internet History in New Zealand.

downtothewire.co.nz/poison-1992/

Collapse
 
ghost profile image
Ghost

OMG same. I was a member of the Sinclair Users Club back in 1982. Being the party animals we were, we used to meet on Friday nights at the Chess Club on Bealey Ave, in Christchurch. I was just typing stuff in from magazines, but my neighbour Simon Glass (year older than me, now an engineer at Google in CA, go figure) was a bit of a prodigy and used to come over with programs he'd developed in hex and written on bits of paper, type them in and bingo we'd have something cool and mysterious happening on that little computer.

Around that time, Tron appeared in movie theatres, so off we went and it was a blast. After that, I remember hanging out so badly for good graphics hardware. The next couple of decades went so SLOOOOWLY..

Collapse
 
patricktingen profile image
Patrick Tingen

Must have been in 1982, around my 12th I guess. Funny part was that I did not have a computer, but I was fascinated by them, so I borrowed a C64 book from my parent's friends and read it from cover to cover and back and started programming on paper due to lack of a real computer. Later - 1983/1984 - at school, we got access to MSX computers and later to Tandy TRS80 computers. I bought my own MSX2 in 1985. As of today, I am still a developer :)

Collapse
 
mohamedelidrissi profile image
Mohamed Elidrissi

I Started learning Android in late 2016-early 2017 from my old $90 cheap ass phone, it was just a hobby then but when I saw myself progressing much further than I expected the addiction began and now I'm pretty decent with Android and also starting to learn full-stack web development which I like. Here is my website if anyone wants to check: mohamedelidrissi.ml

Collapse
 
bluebird1 profile image
bluebird

How does mobile programming feel. I think the phone keypad experience should not be very good.

Collapse
 
mohamedelidrissi profile image
Mohamed Elidrissi

I actually got used to it but I'm also using my laptop

Collapse
 
kr428 profile image
Kristian R.

Started C-64 BASIC in the late 1980s, Pascal on DOS after, and doing more serious work using Perl and bash scripting in the mid-1990s. It's been quite a ride and tools changed pretty much ever since, maybe except for Python which always has been around for certain taks. :)

Collapse
 
hwolfe71 profile image
Herb Wolfe

Off an on, since the early 80s, 1981 or 1982, probably. I went to a magnet school for 5th and 6th grade, and learned on the early Apple IIs. I remember learning Logo/Turtle Graphics and then Applesoft Basic. We didn't have any programming classes in junior high/middle school, so I didn't taking classes again until high school. My dad bought a TI/99-4A at some sort of going out of business sale, so I did do a little bit of basic programming on that, but I don't remember when that was exactly, and it ended up being used more for video games.

Collapse
 
jfrankcarr profile image
Frank Carr

I wrote my first actual program on a computer around 1978 in a college math class. I bought a Timex-Sinclair computer in late 1982 and a Radio Shack Color Computer in 1984.

My first paid programming job, a contract, was in 1984, writing a inventory tracking program for a logging company in a non-standard CPM BASIC. I did a lot of tech support work from 1985 to 1988, learning a lot of programming during that time, mainly C and MASM. I began my first full time job doing software development in 1988.

Collapse
 
axelledrouge profile image
AxelleDRouge

Just about 2 years, I first tried some C and Front course with FreeCodeCamp and the CS50 on HarvardX course for basics.
After that, I learned Java and became a developer. Now I code in Javascript mostly

Collapse
 
val_baca profile image
Valentin Baca

8th grade (about 13 years old), in an afterschool program that taught basic html/css/js on Geocities.

I'll never forget my black-background with red-text Metallica fan site with a "views" counter. 😅

In high school I picked up "C++ for Dummies" and did some maze-navigating Lego Mindstorms. The school was an Engineering Magnet school, so we got to work with a lot of cool stuff, even making a rocket that broke the sound barrier. I helped put together the electronic payload...but it was destroyed in the fall.

Collapse
 
patrick profile image
Patrick Ziegler

I think I started now almost 10 years ago, when I was 12. Two of my friends created a website and I was really fascinated about it, went home, printed out 140 pages of HTML and JS tutorials, and read all of it the same day. Fun times :)

Collapse
 
theoutlander profile image
Nick Karnik

I saw the first computer in 1989, started learning to program in 1991, and I've been coding professionally since 1998.

I've been on a computer for 28 years straight - days, nights, and weekends!

Collapse
 
ruslanuchan profile image
RuslanUchan

My first time was September 2016 in college. I stopped in 2017 to pursue graphic design though. After knowing I can't design stuff and still don't understand how colors fit together and how design compositions work, now I'm back here again 😁

Collapse
 
nachomahn profile image
Lowell Hamilton

I was 10 or so, had my shiny new IBM PCjr, DOS2.1, and the BASIC cartridge in the slot. I set out to build a game like MS Adventure (xyzzy!) ... got fed up and quit. A couple years later I found that the back of Sky and Telescope magazine had a BASIC program in the back of most issues and my library had every issue .... so I re-typed all of those and learned a ton.

I wrote some BBS door games in high school but never really "got" it, and decided on a different career.

I graduated high school and didn't do much until I started doing Linux SysAdmin jobs instead of college. I learned PERL to automate most of my tasks and started writing website form handlers and such, and eventually larger apps.

I STILL do PERL as the only dev maintaining/improving 2 large apps driving $50 million in revenue that I wrote in 2008 and a frontend written in ... wait for it ... prototype.js.

No future in that though and I cannot find good PERL devs to help/replace me, so I am re-tooling my brain to a fullstack JS developer and I am re-writing the app in Node and React (after a year of fighting with the company to approve it).

I feel like this is a fresh start and I feel like have only been programming for 6-months now, even though I have been at it for 30 years and employed as a dev for 20 years.

Collapse
 
harraps profile image
Olivier Schyns

I started in 2012 when I entered University. We learned how to program with Java in the good old Eclipse IDE. Then, because our project where websites with databases, I learned PHP because I though that using WAMP was more convenient.

Later, I wanted to make 3D games so I learned C# to be able to code in Unity (I despised Javascript at the time). I moved from Unity to Superpowers (a 3D game engine for the web) and I had to learn Typescript. By using Typescript, I realized that Javascript wasn't that bad.

Then I tried PICO-8 and löve and learned Lua. Because I was used to OOP I used Moonscript instead of Lua. Then now I am finishing my master and in two years, I've doubled the number of programming languages that I know, with C++, Kotlin, Python, Julia, Coffeescript, Wren. But more than languages, I've also learned about computer graphics, machine learning, linear optimization and compilers.

Now I am learning how to use Godot and I hope to learn in the near future Ruby and why not do stuff with web assembly.

Collapse
 
kfecho30 profile image
Kelsey Fecho

I was about 10 years old (2003ish) when I wrote my first HTML/CSS line. I was that crazy horse girl, and there was a site/game called Horseland. You could personalize your profile page, which I'm sure I did in truly horrendous style.

I picked it up seriously again when I was about 19, working on entrepreneurial ventures and needing web presence. Then I realized I could charge other people for the same, and kept learning!