How long have you been programming?

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.

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/

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 :)

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

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. :)

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.

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.

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

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.

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 :)

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!

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 😁

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.

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.

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!

Started in late 90’s. Learned to program in Basic, DBase, Foxpro in school. Fortran, Pascal, COBOL, C and Visual Basic during Bachelors.. Extensively programmed in Java during Masters and upon completion went to work in advertising industry as a Graphic Designer around 2004-2008 ( Seriously) and haven’t coded during that time... , Started as a action script developer in 2008, now an enterprise systems architect working in financial sector.

In 2008 I was 12 years old and I was in one IT magazine group on Facebook and some guy posted a video about a game he was developing. I jumped to comments and asked him everything about it. I ended up learning Python and Pygame and developing some text-based games and simple games in Pygame but I was always terrible at math so I didn't come a long way with my game dev career, but during next few years until 2014 I ended up going through C++, C#, Java, Unity, PHP, Ruby on Rails, etc... Basically just exploring languages and doing simple stuff not knowing which filed to pick up because I was really excited and overwhelmed with everything.

In 2014 (I ended my 3rd year in high school) I ended up getting an internship over the summer in the first Croatian Y-Combinator founded startup and I decided I will pick up front-end development because I loved programming and design.

That internship went well for me and I decided I don't want to go to college anymore.
During the final year I ended up picking up a few freelance projects in Angular and Ionic and saved some money for an apartment and I moved to Zagreb and I got a job as Front-End Developer where I stayed for almost 2 years and last summer I got a new job as Senior JavaScript developer where I currently work. Being "Senior" can be interpreted in a lot of ways and it differs among companies. Basically, I can do good technical decisions, work on my own and teach other people and I love doing it.

So I would say that I'm programming for about 10 years. But 4 years in a specific field. :)

First time I saw "code" and tried to make sense of it I was like 9 or 10 (1997ish), my first bit of JS I was 13ish (2000), shortly after I started programming my calculator (TI-83) with BASIC (2001), Visual Basic, C, and Java all in High School (2002-2005). But when I got to college the math was too hard so I changed majors, then joined the Army, and then had a kid. I tinkered a little bit with JS in the browser just for fun but for the most part I didn't write any code from 2006 to 2017. Then I decided on a career change and came back to programming and I've been writing Ruby, JS, and little bits of everything else, everyday for about a year and a half.

Since I little bit before I start college in December 2012 or so. It was just for college, I liked, but I didn't have the intention of becoming professional at that time, but things led me to this moment where I am a professional developer.

I started somewhere between 1992 and 1993 on an overpaid 80286, with 20 MiB of HD and 4 MiB RAM (if I recall correctly) that my mom bought us for 1500000 Italian lire.

I remember the cost because it was an incredibly expensive gift for our poor finances, unmatched (in proportion to our wealth back then) by any other object I've ever bought since, not even cars.

A few years later I learnt what 80386 were and that I could not install Linux on my PC, despite being the only guy among my peers to know what Linux was.

Anyway, my first programing language was QBASIC: I started hacking GORILLA.BAS.

That is: I broke it by error and my little brother cried loudly until I managed to fix it (took a few days. I didn't even know English... I only had a English-Italian dictionary).
A great life lesson: no project manager ever managed to match that peer pressure.

Later I've found a book about BASIC forgotten in the library of a friend.
He lended me it for a while so that I did a photocopy.
That was my first programming book ever.

Later at school I learnt Pascal. I loved it.
But Turbo Pascal 3.0 was so slow on my 286, that when my friends called me by phone for help about homeworks they where able to tell me if the program was working right, before my 286 had reached the linking phase!
They used to laugh at that... and actually, I was aware of the deep (and sad) irony..

At the beginning 1998 I learnt about the Internet and got my first mail at school, and few months later a cool friend of mine gifted me his old 486 so I was able to first try Linux and learnt how to build web sites.

To my mom, my brother and to this friend I owe... what I am now.

Started way back in winter of 1982/3 on ZX Spectrum (that I still own).
My first paying job was in summer 1985 as a student/intern, making small updates to some business software written in Fortran, running on a PDP-11 clone.

Initially back in 1998 - '99 on an old IBM machine, that ran Turbo Pascal, for about 1.5 years. Wrote a program that could read a number from input and find out if it's a palindrome or not.

Then I got back into programming back in the summer of 2006. So aprox 11 years.

Depends on what you want to count, I been always interesting in programming since young age. I would say 18 to 20 years.

Professional programming, closer to 12-15 years.

As a teen, I learned to program on an Atari 800XL Was loads of fun. Got my first paying programming job on that machine. Wrote a starfield simulation for the end of show credits for a cable TV show. :-) Went on to get a degree and now have over 35 years experience in everything from C++, Vala, Ruby, PHP, R, and .NET. Also, have held about every job there is in our industry from junior developer to a VP at a consulting firm. These days I just freelance and pick and choose my projects. I've had a great career and really enjoy what I do.

I started in 2003 building crappy web sites with HTML/CSS/JS with bits and pieces of PHP. I also modded up MySpace profiles and dinked around with WordPress and phpBB.

I did that until 2008 when I went to college for journalism.

Started programming again after graduation. Started professionally in 2013.

I took a C# sharp course for absolute beginners 3 years ago, then stop for several months. Picked up C++ for a few months (never was any good with it, but had fun with it). After that, I found Java. Which I love, and used it for a year. However recently I have become bored with it. The syntax is always the same (.this & .that).

Recently in the past month, I worked with Nim for a week (loved it but steep learning curve), Kotlin for a day (different than Java in syntax, but still has all the same problems really), and now, Go for the past few weeks, which I have found to be absolutely incredible!

And to add to all that, I have been learning Python on the side for a couple months for my college course

In total: 3 years
In reality: 1.5 years

I first got into anything you might call programming back in the Geocities days in the early 00s. I didn't really stick with it all the way through. I took it back up again in college, again fell off, and then got programming for good shortly after I graduated.

Been a year I think now. Started last year as a front end developer but I have learned a lot of backend for the last 2 months 😄

Started on a ZX Spectrum in 1983 - so that's 35 years. First time I coded for money was probably in the early 90s when I was about 14 - working with a friend converting a childrens' maths program to run on the Commodore Amiga

1996, actually.

I started as a child, but I started it effectively at the university and right now I have 5 years experience in the industry.

Probably 87. BASIC on a C16.

I started in a C64... In 1989!was a commodore 64 batman edition.

Professionally, in the year 2000, with VB6 and Asp2.0... But migrated quickly to Delphi.

That's a lot of time! 🙄

I started 4 years ago. I first learnt css and html then WordPress, jquery.
Now I am working as full stack developer.
Now I know, laravel, Angularjs, Vuejs, Reactjs.
I love and enjoy to code :)

10 years

Hm, I started C/C++ when i was 12 but i start HTML/CSS when i was 13, I stopped a few years and I started again 4 years ago in hight school, now it's my job ~

Professionally just a year. But I was programming in school so I suppose 4 years(didn’t do much freshman year).

From 2015, at college.