How I got started programming

June 30, 2008

How I got started programming

Mr. Paul C. Dix tagged me to answer these...

How old were you when you started programming?

I started to understand the concept of programming around age nine or ten. I remember how amazing I thought it was that making the computer do new things didn't require rooms full of special equipment.

How did you get started programming?

A lot of my experiences around this time are blurred together.

My parents got me into a beginner programming course for kids at the local community college. The instructor taught the basics of variables and control structures while the students swapped QBasic games they downloaded at home.

The first program I distinctly remember working on calculated golf handicaps from a series of scores. I wrote it with an elementary school friend in his basement using a copy of Borland C++ he found. We fumbled around with functions like getch and cout without any idea that they stood for.

What was your first language?

Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code.

What was the first real program you wrote?

When I joined the website development team at my high school half way though the ninth grade, I took on the task of creating a system to post football scores and statistics to our website. After a frustrating first attempt in Perl, I discovered PHP and rewrote it.

The program allowed our statistician to enter the numbers into a form, saving the web team from having to manually enter all the data from paper print outs. It calculated simple averages and YTD totals.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

In no particular order: QBasic, Visual Basic, Bash, Java, JavaScript, C, C++, Ruby, Perl, PHP, Python, and SQL.

So far, Ruby is my favorite hands down. I'm fortunate enough to say I've never written a line of real production code in either Java or .NET.

What was your first professional programming gig?

The summer before my senior year of high school, I interned in a local government IT applications department. The other developers were doing mostly ASP work, but I built their first PHP application which I deployed on their first Linux server.

Unsatisfied with the maintainability of PHP apps I had built in the past, I developed a Struts-like framework in the process. At this point I was feeling pain with the PHP language and the lack of a suitable web development framework. After a brief exploration into Python, I would soon find relief in Ruby and Rails.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

Engage in the community, both locally and online, as much as possible. Attend user group meetings, contribute to mailing lists, blog, go to conferences that look interesting. Surround yourself with other programmers, especially those you admire. You won't regret it.

What's the most fun you've ever had programming?

Solving interesting problems with great developers while building applications with an impact. 'Nuff said.

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