Poll: How old were you when you started programming?

I didn't start until I was 25, after doing an undergrad in english and a master's in a completely non-technical field. I didn't really think I could become a "real" programmer just that I could learn enough to automate some things. I loved it and also the CS side of things, I kept working at it and now I'm working on my master's in CS, have built quite a good number of sophisticated applications that I'm proud of and am really surprised at how far I've been able to come.

The biggest lesson in all this for me: all of that skill is just a function of time and practice stuff? surprisingly true. I didn't think I could ever do something like build a complier, but after going home and practicing everyday and reading constantly I got there.

The additional lesson is that this method can be applied to most anything. Want to pick up and instrument? Learn a foreign language? Learn math? do it! I meet so many people who say "oh I could never be good at X", you can. And if it takes 10,000 hours/10 years to be an expert, it probably only takes 1000 hours/1 year to become intermediate, which is good enough to have a lot fun with something.

Learning is the single most amazing thing a human can do, so don't stop

Born in '75 ... my parents bought me an Atari 400 and I programmed BASIC on it ... but I can't remember what year. The 400 came out in 79 but I think it was a couple years after that.

Funny, my first was similar, in Apple ][ BASIC. When I was in 7th grade, a friend (still to this day) and I had a typing class which used Apple ][s. One day we had a substitute teacher in who knew absolutely nothing about computers. I decided it would be funny to prank her so I wrote something like:

    10 PRINT "GOVERNMENT ACCESS ONLY: THE FBI HAS BEEN CONTACTED"
    20 FLASH
    30 GOTO 10

I called her over with a worried face and said "I don't know what happened!" I could see her heart skip a beat as her eyes bugged out.

We quickly started snickering and admitted it was just a joke. She laughed it off and was a good sport about it.

yeah those c-64's were a lot of fun, but man I must have had 2-3 die on me so I ended up on Atari 400 (eventually when I could buy the 800 I upgraded).

Star Raiders in an emu is still pretty incredible.

I was about 11 or so. I got a hand-me-down Apple II from my uncle which came with a few manuals. One of which was for the Lisa assembler which had some graphics routines. I just punched a few in and had some fun with it. Then again, I was the kid who asked for chemistry sets and electonics kits for xmas...