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Poll: How long have you been programming?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#101

Post by RyanMcGreal »

I clicked 10+ years because that's how long I've been programming continuously on a professional basis. However, I first programmed back in 1985 on a Compaq Deskpro Portable computer (640 KB of RAM! 40 MB hard disk! Only 30 lbs!). I started out with a custom AUTOEXEC.BAT file, and then moved into programming in GW-BASIC after a friend of my parents gave me a manual and encouraged me to poke around.

Later, I migrated to BASCOM and then QBbasic. Then I pretty much stopped programming completely after high school until I started again, more or less by accident, around 1999 when my boss asked if anyone knew how to make a web page. I thought, "How hard can it be?" and that became my gateway back into programming.

I started programming web applications in Classic ASP. I was somewhat astonished to see that the programming language was VBScript, which looked an awful lot like QBbasic with a few objects bolted on. Once Classic ASP was deprecated for .Net, I jumped over to Python as part of a more general move away from the Microsoft platform onto Linux.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#102

Post by train_robber »

tmh88j wrote: post #97

My first attempt at programming was in 8th grade (mid 20's now) using VB. I remember writing a program that converted text to pig latin and I was so proud of it. Despite majoring in engineering, I only had to take some intro programming courses and used a bit of Matlab. Well, fast forward to about 8 months ago I came up with an idea for a web-app and decided that now was the perfect time to become good at programming…

Pretty much the same. Started with QBasic though; then 'graduated' to VB (5.0?). My first 'cool' program I remember was in QB, it was kind of like a shell for DOS, that had the looks of Windows 95 with a start menu and all - rendered completely in text. We called it Access or something. Did it with 2 of my friends; as luck would have it - one guy is now the CTO of my present company and the other one is the CEO (who has no clue about programming anymore!).

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#104

Post by spqr »

lbraasch wrote: post #4

It 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 turn 40 in 2012 and I started on my Commodore 64 with BASIC and 6502 assembly in 1982.

Been in IT professionally since I was 17 in 1990.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#107

Post by brownbat »

I learned BASIC on an Apple II when I was wee, little over 20 years ago. I wrote little choose your own adventure games filled with silly puns. I've flirted with programming ever since, but never programmed professionally, and most coders I've met could code circles around me.

Years since I first started coding isn't very indicative of my skill level, but years I've been coding professionally (ie, zero) probably understates things too.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#108

Post by Cyph0n »

I first started programming in C++ around 2 years ago, with the honest intention of becoming a game designer. Not too long after starting, I found out that that would take too long, so I stopped for a while. Around a year after that, I got hooked to C#, but the relationship lasted for only a few weeks. Finally, after another long hiatus, I pulled up my sleeves, and decided to learn Python. Since then, I've worked through the first 20 or so Project Euler problems (big deal), and written countless snippets and a few projects. I intend to learn a micro framework, such as Flask, and then hopefully dive into Django.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#109

Post by edw519 »

I was looking for something and found an old green-bar print-out of an SPS program I wrote in 1971. This was at Gateway High School in Monroeville, Pa., the same school pg went to a few years later. I imagine they upgraded to a modern language like FORTRAN, COBOL, or PL/1 by the time pg rolled up his sleeves in that data center.
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