I was already interested in electronics when my high school got PET computers at the end of my junior year. I stayed after school to get to use them. How could you not want to learn to use this new powerful tool?
Ask HN: What motivated you to learn to code at a young age?
21–29 of 29 posts
Re: Ask HN: What motivated you to learn to code at a young age?
#22video games
Re: Ask HN: What motivated you to learn to code at a young age?
#23As a kid I used to get a kick out of reading manuals, I particularly remember those for SimLife and SimEarth. Somehow I got my hands on the manual for PC Tools for Windows, and I got really interested in the section documenting the scripting language. I think that was the first time I had the idea that I could make the computer do new things. I wore that book out carrying it to school to read at recess, thinking about what little utilities I'd make.
What's weird is we had computers at my school, and we'd done some assignments in Logo, but it never really clicked for me that this could be used for something creative. I was the kid the teachers would send for to fix their computers, but for a long time software was a mysterious thing I couldn't imagine making myself.
Re: Ask HN: What motivated you to learn to code at a young age?
#24I started quite young, around 7 or 8. Obviously nothing advanced or anything, just very simple visual basic, and messing around with some chips and a few LED's. Got into web design/development in my early teens, did a bunch of app development, bit of backend, now mostly frontend & design of web apps. To me code is magical; Even the small things like seeing a button click change something, or even seeing LED's light u…
This is almost me, without the LEDs and the management type work.
Since the computer was already there, building things on the computer did not require buying more things, and I could see the result immediately.
I would not say magic.
Re: Ask HN: What motivated you to learn to code at a young age?
#25I couldn't not.. I had a fundamental desire to know how to make programs for the computer, it seemed like deep magic to child-me that there were these "things" that could exist in the computer, these worlds.. that were made of "something" and I wanted to know what this something was, the matter that comprised programs..
It took me a while to figure it out, pre-internet days.. I understood that there was BASIC, on the C64, but I saw many programs there which would LIST just as a SYS statement, and some number, and I could understand that that number was not the entire program, and so that there was something hidden "beneath". The machine-code..
So, maybe I was not motivated at all.. There were no external factors, it was and still is, an intrinsic need in me, to understand this stuff, and the world in general, though I fell into the computing rabbit-hole a long time ago, and have only reasonably common knowledge about the rest of the world.
Re: Ask HN: What motivated you to learn to code at a young age?
#26Logo turtle in primary school was fun. I could draw with it better than by hand. What motivated me was that I wanted to be better than everyone else in class. Touch typing, first to finish assignments.
From first grade of highschool we learned python. Python was amazing, helped me do math and physics homeworks. I used it for everything I now use wolfram alpha for.
I’m really blessed to have had it all served on a plate. Great school system FTW.
Re: Ask HN: What motivated you to learn to code at a young age?
#27A slightly different answer, because I'm sure there were others like me:
I learned to code in BASIC when I was 11. It must have been from a manual, because there wasn't anything else. I built a bunch of things, the last of which - and the only one I remember with any clarity - was a type of solver for a number game. I don't remember which, just that it was one where solving without software was much harder.
And I stopped. Because I felt stupid. It was hard, and when you got stuck there wasn't somewhere you could just go for answers. You had to figure it out. And neither of my parents coded, so they couldn't tell me that my running into these problems isn't a sign of being stupid or incompetent.
I kept telling myself I was rubbish, and so I stopped. Hardly anyone coded in those days, so what did it matter anyways? But it ended up mattering a whole lot. This was the seed from where other decisions stemmed. I'm not one to regret, but I feel really sad for this girl who learned to believe the wrong thing.
It took me a long time to undo the damage of this early thinking. I don't think I've ever completely reversed it, and I say this as someone who does actively code. I'm glad kids these days start with sandboxed environments, and gradually progress.
Recently, someone I know asked me for some recommendations for his kid (aged 10) to start learning Python. I gave him whatever tips I have, but man, I'm not rushing to get my kids into a proper coding language just yet.
Re: Ask HN: What motivated you to learn to code at a young age?
#28[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What motivated you to learn to code at a young age?
#29My family got a BBC B when I was about 6 or 7. I programmed a few bits and pieces in BASIC. Even got my parents to buy me Input magazine [1], which I only partly read.
What really got me started was seeing the Bapaug demo [2] when I got an Atari ST. That motivated me to play around with BASIC again. Which was frustratingly slow. I switched over to 68000. Teaching myself from some sample code. I created my first commercial program [3] a few years later with a couple of friends. 30 years ago at the back end of this year.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_(magazine)