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Ask HN: How did you learn coding

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11–20 of 63 posts

Re: Ask HN: How did you learn coding

#11
My brother went to a computer camp and brought back a folder with an introduction to BASIC printed using that purple ink tech they had before photocopiers. (What's that called again?)

We didn't have a computer but I read that and loved it. A friend had an Apple II and I got to try out some of the stuff round at his house. Later on when I was in year 9 (1985) I got my first computer ,an Apple //c and I did more BASIC and some assembler. Then uni in 1989 where we learnt Miranda, Modula-2, etc etc. Made the transition to Java in 1997.

Re: Ask HN: How did you learn coding

#12
Age 16 or so, Boy Scout explorer post at the local bank in 1969. The person teaching us (a programmer at the bank) gave us a brief intro to the RPG (Report Program Generator) language, then said "Now, think of something you'd like the computer to do, and write a program to do it. Here are the manuals, and I'm here to answer any questions you might have." First "real" experience was at Univ. of Illinois, CS 101, with PL/I as the language.

Re: Ask HN: How did you learn coding

#14
I started by borrowing my mom's login for the HP2000 at the local college when I was 9 (that's 1976). Amazingly, the college let me take Fortran and PL/I classes for real. Other than that, was self-taught through high school, then got a CS degree at CMU and paid attention to at least some of the classes.

As for why...what on earth is more fun than coding?!

(edit: I see there's an HP laptop called the HP 2000. I mean this one: http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=411)

Re: Ask HN: How did you learn coding

#15
Self taught. Started programming at the age of 7. It was a programming book designed for kids. It taught BASIC on the Commodore 64. I later went to learn assembly at age 11 because I was interested in video game development and assembly was the only way to get access to additional functionality / performance. Moved on to C and x86 Assembly in my early teenage years (again motivated by making video games). Moved more to general purpose / web technologies once the Internet started becoming more popular. PHP, Java, Rails, Node.

Re: Ask HN: How did you learn coding

#16

Extending on this... Are universities the best place to get a CS education these days?

A CS education maybe, a programming education probably not. A lot of it depends on how self-motivated and auto-didactic you are. I've taught CS at universities and programming as well.

I taught full time at a community college for half a decade in a vocational programming degree. I tried to slip as much useful theory into the courses as I could, but ultimately they were terminal voc-tech degrees like welding and auto mechanic that enabled the graduates to go to work at entry level developers at local employers (primarily state government).

I often wondered "what is it that we do here?" since everything I would teach was available online, and more, and better, and free! But many students just need someone to be there and guide them through things (this is why the online courses our department tried to do were a disaster). For a self motivated independent learner, they would no doubt go crazy in the on-the-rails structured courses.

For computer science, the science part, where you primarily investigate computational-related mathematics, I think a formal education from a university is invaluable. But only a small fraction of software development jobs (if that's what you want to do) need that level of rigor.

Re: Ask HN: How did you learn coding

#18
post #8

I learned how to program on a TI-83 graphing calculator. I was bored in class and I made a simple text-based blackjack game. 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 start…

Same for me, had a TI-85 when I was 13 (which now I wish I hadn't sold, it's a collector's item! Never giving up my 89!) Friend and I wrote a Drug Wars clone and a bunch of math solvers. Then we got into websites in the same way. Also had an old Windows machine, on which I pored through every DOS man page (didn't turn onto *nix till way later).

Took AP CS in high school on a whim just for the credit and haven't looked back since, been at it for 18 years now. Thinking about a sabbatical though as of late.

Re: Ask HN: How did you learn coding

#20
My dad and I used to build those Radio Shack kits where you could make a simple radio with a breadboard. This was probably when I was 5 or 6?

It was clear that I enjoyed that, and I enjoyed the old DOS games at the time, and my dad had a bit of an IS background at the time, so he encouraged me and together we did some BASIC programming together. I also eventually got one of those Lego Mindstorms kits as one of the other commenters mentioned when they came out, which probably would've been around age 7 or 8.

I just took off by myself after that. Playing around more with basic, eventually learning some basic frontend stuff so I could show off webpages to my friends, and then moving on to some Java after that.

It's been a passion ever since.

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