Poll: How long have you been programming? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#41

Post by cristiantincu » Mon, Apr 02, 2012, 9:32 AM UTC

1988–1989: first Logo encounter; 1992 or so: first Pascal encounter; 1994: got my first PC; started spending long hours with BP 7.0 and BC 3.1; 1996: first real applications (several thousands LOCs, proper GUIs etc.); 2002: first job as a programmer (with the LAMP stack).

I guess 10+ is an honest vote.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#42

Post by Uchikoma » Mon, Apr 02, 2012, 9:35 AM UTC

I think around 1981 when VC20s came to Germany and I was around 8 or 9 (after that Kosmos CP1, C64, CPC/CPM, Amiga 1000/500/4k60 Retina Z3 (who remembers that one?), PCs, short love affair with BeBoxes (nice blue CPU load LEDs :-), then Macs since the Cube).

My first larger program was "Towers of Hanoi" where I "solved" the algorithm on my own for. Still the programming I'm most proud of.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#43

Post by waterlesscloud » Mon, Apr 02, 2012, 9:39 AM UTC

prodigal_erik wrote: post #36

waterlesscloud wrote: post #11

Well this makes me feel old. 30 years since I learned Basic and 6809 Assembler.

TRS-80 Color Computer? That's what I learned 6809 assembly on around 1981, only to be startled how many little things were harder on the Commodore 64's 6502. The extra memory (64k after bank switching!) made up for it though. I didn't have a multiprocessing platform until 1988 (4.3BSD at college). I wonder how much better I'd be now if I could have gotten my hands on OS-9 earlier.

Yep! Good ol CoCo. I didn't have edasm+ at first, so I was "hand assembling" to bytecodes. Had a little too much spare time as a kid.

My dad helped me double the ram by piggybacking chips on the existing ones. I used to take the cover off and stare at motherboard along with printed schematics to understand how the thing worked.

I think it's a lot harder for kids to get the kind of basis for things now.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#44

Post by parbo » Mon, Apr 02, 2012, 9:40 AM UTC

  ~1985 - Basic on Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K
  ~1990 - GFA Basic on Atari ST
  ~1992 - Turbo Pascal on PC
  1994-1998 - Scheme and C++ at university
  1998-now - Professional programmer in C++, C and Python

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#45

Post by orz-fi » Mon, Apr 02, 2012, 9:40 AM UTC

I am more concerned about how long I have been NOT programming!

It must be like a month since I last programmed, and even then it was just a little ProjectEuler.Net

I need to get my hands dirty again, I'm losing touch.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#46

Post by chrisveto » Mon, Apr 02, 2012, 9:41 AM UTC

I started out as many not-so-smart or very-smart people do with HTML & CSS. That was back in 2005 or so, which made me 13 years old. As of 2011 I am quite comfortable with PHP, JavaScript (and it's libraries). I've done some very small experiments with Python, Ruby on Rails & C++. That all being said, I have a crap ton to learn and I am nowhere near a professional level.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#47

Post by minikomi » Mon, Apr 02, 2012, 9:42 AM UTC

After setting up a few Wordpress blogs for friends I found _whys poignant guide about 2 years ago and haven't looked back!

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#48

Post by vivekjishtu » Mon, Apr 02, 2012, 9:44 AM UTC

QBasic on a 80386 and I was 13 when I started.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#49

Post by sev » Mon, Apr 02, 2012, 9:47 AM UTC

I think the first time I tried programming was when I was simply looking at QBasic code, astonished how Nibbles and Gorillas work and thought, "these characters I see on the screen before running the game are what make the game function? If so, how?" This was on my father's 486/33 I believe, although I barely remember his 386 which could have been what it was on. Regardless, I was probably 5 or 6 and I tried messing with those characters on the screen to modify the game. Later my parents bought me one of those kid laptops with a little 6 inch x 3 inch screen that you could get from Toys 'R Us and I found out it had a programming option where you can type in QBasic code...I found some code in a math book we had at home, and typed away. After I got the one from the book working, I modified them to see what my changes would do.

Re: Poll: How long have you been programming?

#50

Post by gaius » Mon, Apr 02, 2012, 9:47 AM UTC

Started with BBC Basic and 6502 assembler at home, then Pascal at school on CP/M and DOS, then FORTRAN and MATLAB at college on VMS, then C++ and Perl on Solaris at work, then PL/SQL, then OCaml for personal projects, now mainly Python on Linux for work. I also have Acorns and Commodores at home for tinkering.

For work tho', only work counts. Real-world programming is not just about programming, it's doing so within a set of constraints that you don't have a say in (e.g. compatibility with existing systems, OS, deadlines/timescale, specs, users, etc etc). Adapting to these situations is what makes a successful industrial programmer, not what you did as a kid.