Live data from Hacker News

Poll: How old were you when you started programming?

news.ycombinator.com

101–110 of 121 posts

Re: Poll: How old were you when you started programming?

#103
Age 11. The year was 1969. My stepfather was a physicist; he took me to his office on Saturdays and gave me access to an ASR-11 Teletype connected to a GE Mark V timesharing system. My first programs were in Basic and did nothing interesting, of course.

Re: Poll: How old were you when you started programming?

#104

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…

So what do you do for a living now? I'm in somewhat a similar situation and am curious where your skills have taken you professionally.

Re: Poll: How old were you when you started programming?

#106
I started with 12, stealing html & javascript from other sites. I played around with Flash some time, but then started coding in PHP with 14 or something. Never stopped since then. I'm 21 now and I have a web development company since last year based in Buenos Aires (Argentina). Pretty cool how the dots connect when you look back in time!

Re: Poll: How old were you when you started programming?

#109
I was 8 or 9 when the teacher in my small rural school brought in his Sharp MZ-80K and taught the class to program. We hand-wrote and debugged our code with pen and paper and took our turns to type them in and test them. Within a short while I was coding applications to teach and test History and Irish Language which he subsequently sold. Next summer I worked with him teaching Basic, Logo and Word Processing to teachers as a summer job. After that we got a Sharp MZ700 and later an Amstrad CPC464, and I went on to teach myself Z80 assembly. Went to Uni and studied Computer Science and the joys of VAX/VMS, Unix, x86 PCs, the early days of the Internet (nic.funet.fi via FTP-over-email anyone?)

I can't believe I've been programming for 30 years! I feel old...

Post reply on HN