A friend dragged me into an extracurricular competitive programming when we were in school. Had to code in Pascal, of all languages.

Funny thing is, the first session was full to the point of people having to stand, a month or two later only 3 people attended, and that's when it stopped.

I didn't like the math they threw at me in the Networking course I did - back in 2006, I think. I think it was like Ohms law, but I saw that shit and noped out into a Gamedev course. And that's how I ended up Iearning Algebra: by learning how to program. Before that, math always scared me.

Anyway, I didn't become a gamedev due to grueling hours I heard they did (fuck that - I work to live, not the other way around), and ended up becoming a data engineer.

I learned C, C++, Java, Python, C#, Haskell, Python again (because the lack of types confused the hell out of me - glad they fixed that bit!), roughtly in that order, so I'm pretty all-rounded software engineer in general, when it comes to languages :D

got into coding cuz I found out that’s how I can automate analysis and play with research questions more easily.

I like making things. And coding had an overall lower cost of entry, and lower overall cost than wood working and making custom hardware projects. I still enjoy the other two, but when money is tight or I'm waiting on delivery of supplies, I work on coding projects.

An assembly editor cart (yes) on a TRS80. I made a rotating ellipsoid.

For me it was about web developing (front-end), when I was a teenager I tried learning Python, but it was more about math and stuff I never find them amazing back then, but few years later I saw a video about html, WOW, it was mind blowing, I can create a website!!! after a while I made a simple php app and connected it to a Mysql DB, good old days.

My introduction or what got me intrested was Farming Simulator 2009 when I was 10.

The game had amazing mod support and I found out that each mod, like a new tractor, had a modDesc.xml file in it that contained values like in-game price, name of the tractor, fuel tank volume, ... .And I found out that changing these values would change these values in game, which made me feel like an absolute hackerman.

Hacking early shareware to unlock features because I didn't have money.

Wait... That's still about money. Uh... Puzzles.

I was 7 and I found a booklet for BASIC programming language that came with my C64. I was fucking ecstatic that I could just write words and make computer go brrrr. My first project was my school schedule in a form of a table created with n number of print statements. I felt like a fucking wizard.

Yeah, scripts to automate things. Especially the boot procedure in DOS, to allocate the memory in the right way depending on what I wanted to do.

Had a 27mc linked to my pc to download mp3s at 800 bytes a second and it needed some specific things to function.

Then came the internet and I started my computer science education, learned to program for real then, but not a lot about internet and web scripts. Taught myself html, CSS, flash, javascript, PHP, CGI and later Python and everything related to the hosting of those things.

And that's what I still do, teaching myself new web related technologies or even re-educating myself in old ones (javascript!)

I stumble on a FoxPro tutorial book when I was a child and I just can't wait to try it on computer.

Web design. I suck at it, but it got me into programming.

15 years ago, I thought I wanted to make a game. Turns out, I didn't.

A few years ago, I sought out Linux. Learning to use it has made me so much more confident and excited about technology. I understood so much more. And yet, it feels like I don't understand nearly enough. So I'm learning programming so I can start looking through codebases for the projects I use, maybe seeing if I can add new features or fix some bugs that are annoying me. I've sort of accomplished that goal for one program. There are also some programs that don't exist, or don't exist in the way I want them to that I intend on developing.

I'd like to learn reverse engineering too...

Well, I guess I'm a programmer only by technicality. I haven't done anything serious and I'm certainly not decent at the art. I'm just curious. 🐇

🤑

For some reason in middle school I tried it and, for obvious reasons, couldn't figure it out. Then in 2012-2014 Reddit kept telling everyone to learn Python. I failed that and kept trying randomly for 10 years. I've only recently begun making progress in web dev, which is deliberately avoided because of Reddit language opinions.

Ignoring all of that, I really like text editors for some reason, and I'm on a journey to make some. I still haven't made any, but it's a goal.

I was heavy into skateboarding as a kid, and I was interested in making some skateboarding media website with images and videos. I had initially began with wix, because I had no idea programming was a thing (I barely used technology, or even a phone). I messed around with it for a while, and then learned that I could make websites with just a simple html file… And the rest was history. Ended up getting into PHP, then game development with Java, etc.

The realization that games are made by humans and that i can become a game developer

I worked as a network engineer and got pretty frustrated working with outdated applications that were not user friendly. Once I became a supervisor, a large part of my job became writing and generating reports summarizing events that happened on the network that no one would ever read. I wanted to learn programming to automate the things I hated about my job.

I'm still an engineer, not a developer, but I enjoy writing user focused programs that reduce or eliminate worker frustration. As with many jobs, it's not the networking that's difficult, it's all the other bullshit you have to do.

Also, learning how to parse, model and visualize data can really help you make your point to your management and get your ideas pushed through. Also a great way to earn brownie points with your bosses, as managers tend to love graphs.

Wish I could say it was a passion for me but I really learned out of necessity.

Writing mods and server plugins for counter strike 1.6 is what got me into it.

Reading Goldwasser's paper on elliptic curves, got me into math and then automating math calculations.

I think I was 11 or 12 when I started plaxing Tibia (a very early MMORPG). I really enjoyed it. At some point I found out that somebody has leaked the source code. You could host your own Tibia server. You could create new map segments or introduce new quests by Lua scripting. There was a huge community for "Open Tibia", hundreds of servers with thousands of players. First, I got into mapping, then I got into scripting and loved it.

I dicked around with BASIC in the early 90s and then started CS in high school, where I learned Pascal and it just took off from there.

Getting old, "broken" computers running Linux was the first thing when I was about 11 or 12 years old. Then:

1. needing a way to keep them running
2. wanting ways to make running them easier
3. wanting those ways to be easier/simpler

Often this involved programming. Eventually I found out that companies pay money for this kind of thing.

But now I'm finding it difficult to find work which aligns with those original values. Getting paid means delivering what people will pay for, not necessarily solving problems. What got me into programming is probably what will get me out of it (profesionally, anyway).

Having an electrical background I noticed a lot of logic disappearing into code and still wanted access to it. Also, virtualisation and emulation are a lot cheaper to run.