1–10 of 63 posts
Suggested topics: - Medium of learning: classroom, textbook, etc. - Age you started - Whether you taught yourself - What kept you coding
After that, I kept coding because I really liked solving puzzles and building things. To me, libraries and APIs were like pieces of LEGO that you could use to create your own contraption. Probably the most exciting coding moment was when I figured out how to use interrupt 33h to add mouse functionality to my games!
What really got me "over the hump" was deciding one weekend that I needed to focus if I was going to be able to bring my ideas to life (www.sampl.us). I got Javascript, The Good Parts on Amazon and just hammered on the basics of the language over the course of a few weekends. I kept at it over the next few weeks, and I've come back to it in bursts ever since. Never fails to be one of the most rewarding and frustrating parts of my week.
Five years later, I'm still a pretty mediocre programmer. But now when I can have an idea, I get to watch it become real. It's a good feeling :)
Later my friends and I would use the link cable to share programs between our calculators, and I would pour over the source code and try to understand everything. There was an ASCII fighting game I loved and I added new moves and characters.
Once I learned how to "view source" a website I started doing that everywhere and figuring out how the Web worked. That, plus a Linux install disk and an old, case-less desktop got me on the road to where I am today (supporting a SaaS company as an Infrastructure Engineer).
I bought a copy of Turbo Pascal when it first came out and that was really my first foray into the world of 'real' programming. I think I made my first $$ from a software sale from a Turbo Pascal simple point of sale system I wrote for a pharmacy.
Since then, I've pretty much taught myself several other languages over the years. I find books and video courses to be of low value (NOTE: To ME, others may find opposite results). Latest work is in Ruby and Javascript etc. using SQL backends.
I've found the best way for me to really get to grips with any language is to start building small 'real world' projects with it and experience all the triumphs and pitfalls along the way.
Having said that, I do struggle with some new concepts these days. NoSQL still baffles me, and I never got the hang of Ruby on Rails (my latest web app is 25,000+ lines of Ruby but in a Sinatra based framework).
So, no formal software development training, but I have the love for creating stuff out of code that keeps me motivated to constantly learn.
Now I'm okay-ish with c++, python, and a little bit of matlab. I need to do some serious work with learning design patterns and study more algorithms before I'd really consider myself a good programmer.