Started with Commodore VIC-20 listings in magazines.
Poll: How long have you been programming?
61–70 of 329 posts
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Despite the advances in tech, kids today who want to learn to program have it much harder. Why is that?
The hypothesis is that the 'stack' is much taller. Back when all you needed was QBasic to "learn to code", "learning to code" meant reproducing other software you used on a daily basis. Software is generally much more polished now, and it requires much more time and work to get it so polished (assuming it's at all complex). I'm not saying I agree with this. But the situation is definitely different from 10 years ago…
I don't think that's true. NOTEPAD.EXE and Firefox is all you need to start with HTML and JavaScript, for example. Microsoft gives away Visual Studio for free download, there are all the open source languages (ActiveState does great distros for Windows) etc etc.
It's a cultural shift. Kids these days are consumers, not producers.
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#63You forgot 40+ and 50+ [I qualify for the first and almost for the second].
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#64If parroting code listings from computer magazines counts. Good old times.
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#65I wrote up an history of how I got involved in the IT industry, http://www.michielovertoom.com/cv/software-developer/, the 'Background' part.
It all started with programmable calculators...
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#66TI 58c (programmable calculator), CBM 3032 Basic/Assembler, Apple ][ (Basic, UCSD Pascal/Modula, Lisp), DEC 10 (Pascal), VAX 11/750 (Pascal), VAX 11/780 (Pascal, ...), Symbolics 3600 (Lisp), SUN 3, SUN 4, Atari 1040ST, Mac SE/30 (MacScheme, MCL), ...
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#676 years. That puts me in the 3-5 years category? Well I started at 13 with C++.
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#68hmmm ... I upvoted and all, but I'm starting to think this post is just karma bait.
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#69It would be very interesting to cross correlate with age. Some programmers were exposed to code at a very young age. IMO, programming for 10+ yrs by age 20 is far more fascinating of a statistic than say programming for 15+ yrs by age 50. I ticked 10+, and I am 26. I was designing 'web pages' when I was in middle school, albeit geocities html, but then had my first programming class (C++) when I was 15. Curly braces…
I'm 40 and I don't know exactly if I started at 9, 10 or 11.
Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?
#70Related: are there any 2nd or 3rd generation programmers around? My both parents are professional software engineers. (Waiting for someone to go: "I am a direct descendant of Ada Lovelace, now get off my lawn")
Third ?
I'm 40. My grandfather, when he was young, even if he did almost no programming, was a leader in the introduction of computing in press in US and later in France.