I dabbled around in BASIC for a while, but my real effort to learn programming started with Python when I was about 18. Compared to much of what I've seen on here, I'm quite a late starter, but then again, I have many interests.
Ask HN: How did you learn programming?
21–24 of 24 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you learn programming?
#22Started typing BASIC from my ZX81 manual because the machine could do little otherwise, moved on to a bit more on the C64 but it really kicked off when I got an Amiga. A lot of games in AMOS and then after weeks of delicate preparation, convinced my parents to buy me a book that was a spin-off of an Amiga mag, it came with the full version of Dice C (£25 was a lot of money for a book for a 14 year old!).
Later I got a C compiler off a PC mag and dabbled with that, moved on to Delphi and then by the time the internet made an appearance in my household I began with the HTML and shortly afterwards Perl and then PHP. It was only at this point that I started learning "properly". I guess partly because it was time and partly because it was the first time I ever had some level of access to best practices, theory and whatnot.
Re: Ask HN: How did you learn programming?
#23Learned Basic from my computer's manual, learned assembly from magazines.
I took some "computer programming" class in high school, but computers were still new-fangled to the faculty and it was entirely self-directed. I used the time to make a game in assembly on the school's Model III. There were PC Jrs for a broader computer literacy class, but I never used those.
In college, I started as a physics major and hence learned Fortran. Dropped out for a couple of years, went back as a CS major. Then was exposed to many things; C, C++, Prolog, Ada. But Pascal was the workhorse of the curriculum.
First job out of college was C (legacy projects) and C++ (new projects). And Visual Basic for some quick and dirty things.
Worked as a programmer for a while. Stopped. Did something else for many years. The last year or so I've been retraining myself. Played with Erlang and Clojure, but nothing serious. Made a couple of toy Android apps with Java. Wrote some simple Atari 2600 things using an emulator. Working through an idea for a site with Python/Django at the moment.
I'd like to work as a programmer again, I think. Or more accurately, I really enjoy being able to build things.
I feel most at home in C++ still, but I find myself using Python to try out ideas more and more as time goes on. Assembly still makes me happy, but I don't really use it for anything.
Re: Ask HN: How did you learn programming?
#24As per my brother's recommendation, I ignored all the modern hoo-ha's about high-level programming languages and dove right into C and C++.
Spent weeks grinding it out until I was finally comfortable writing code. I can tell you honestly that this experience has never left me and I've never been at a completely loss navigating through different languages since.