A question to the forum gods(yes, you with the 2k+ posts)

[Need4Sleep]

yes, im talking to you duoas,firedraco,hanst,framework,moschops,disch and many other forum veterans(sorry if i forgot your name)

How did you first start with programming, why, and how long have you been programming? Programming has been a passion for me ever since i picked it up around 6-7 months ago, and im excited to graduate high-school next year and go into college to enjoy learning everything about programming. Im interested in seeing how all of you first picked up programming and how long you've been at the profession for.

Also, what tips would you give to someone like me that is such an avid learner. I've spent just about all of my summer wages at the moment ordering a library of new books to read and subjects to learn about(OpenGl, Game engines, Game mathematics, c++ reference bibles, countless c++ books on sale.)


EDIT**: in case you did not notice from the posts below, you don't ACTUALLY need 2000+ posts, i am just looking for people with years of experience that are willing to share their stories!

Thanks!

[chrisname]

I started with HTML when I was 12, then I heard about C++ somewhere and started learning it. It took me a while to find a good tutorial to learn from (the one on this site, as a matter of fact) and eventually I started understanding C++ when I was about 14. I Googled "C++ forum" and this site was the first result (I don't think I noticed the forum when I read the tutorial), and then I signed up here. I've been programming for about 3 years. I should be going to university later this year to study CS :)

[Moschops]

Needed a job to pay the rent after I finished university. The job wasn't programming (I had no programming knowledge or experience) but required some programming here and there, so I picked it up as I went.

[Albatross]

Originally my dad wanted me to try some programming when I was 9. He got me a book about programming in C#, and left me to my own devices. I thought it was okay, but didn't really fall in love with the field. I also took a C course at about the same time (which made modifications to the C standard library and taught some evil practices), which I did not really enjoy. I might have programmed for about a year, but then I kind-of stopped.

When I came back to programming a year or two later (I think I was 12) I completely fell in love with the field and its pure creative potential, and have been programming ever since.

-Albatross

[BHX]

Well I'm offended now :P. I don't even have 500 posts, but I've been doing this for almost 14 years (need to take my art more seriously if I want to make a living at programming). I too got into HTML in my freshman year of high school (which I was already interested in this before then as I played Mortal Kombat on the SNES the year before I believe). When I was in my Foundations of art class an Art Institute rep came in to talk to us about our future. That is where I first found that you could learn to make video games because before that I thought they were some Einstein elites that made them. A few years back I fell for the glitz and glamour on tv and took the DeVry University's Online Game and Simulation Programming Bachelor's Degree. Finished it in February 2011 and been turned down everywhere I apply so now I just sit working on whatever in C++.

Yes, it is true, Mortal Kombat by Ed Boon and John Tobias from Midway got me into it (and I've played every MK since).

[Duthomhas]

About 27 years now.
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/lounge/6250/#msg28300
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/lounge/1953/#msg8299

You seem to be on the right track. Keep it up!

[Cheraphy]

I don't have many posts because I lurk a lot (and because this is my second account here :P )

My dad was a computer engineering major in college before he was forced to drop out. When I was really little he always had the coolest things, like a computer with more wires running out of the back of it than your average server. turns out it was an old Amiga he had hacked straight to hell :P. Well, being the curious little bugger that I was I wanted to know how all of this worked. As such I asked my dad questions constantly. Of course I wouldn't understand most of what he had to say at the time.

Fast forward until I was 12, I wanted to make a video game based on a story I was writing. I asked my dad how I could do it. He said it's not something I can just sit down and do overnight. I told him I understood and he told me the things I would need to do. I ended up picking up something called DarkBasic, a basic dialect designed to make video-games. The Pro version cost like $80, the free version was missing a lot. It was more or less a scam but it got me started.

I gave up pretty quickly on that endeavor, but a few years later I picked Basic back up after telling my friends I could hack. Shortly thereafter, right about the time I admitted to my friends I was full of shit, I decided to pick up C++. It took me a year of on and off self teaching to get started, but when I did I was hooked. I was 14 then, It's been six years now, and I spent more time during high school studying computer science and programming then I did studying actual coursework. I just finished my second year majoring in computer science at University and I've been doing my best to stand out and annihilate my classmates in the coursework.

[Disch]

I think I started Junior high, with VS4.0. 7th grade I think... so I was 12/13... which means I've been at it on and off for 17-18 years now. Although I didn't actually get a programming related job until about a year ago.

I probably learned a bit unusually. I jumped right in with MFC since VS had a 'ClassWizard' that made it easy to make pushbutton GUIs. So I started with simple games that used that widgetry.

I think the first game I made had like 4 action buttons and several designated "noun" buttons. The noun buttons would change as you went to other rooms -- so one room had a "key" or a "guard" or something, and you would push the "Take" button, then the "key" button to take the key... or something like that.

After that my friend introduced me to NESticle (which was new at the time) and the world of NES emulation. From there I discovered ROM hacking, which is basically game modding for emulated systems. I was a Final Fantasy fan, and I discovered some docs called "Final Fantasy Bytes" which outlined where all the stats for monsters, shops, items, etc were stored in the ROM, so you could go in a hex editor and easily modify them.

So I decided to take those docs and write a tool which automated modifying that data. The tool ended up being called "FFHackster" (google it, it's still in relatively common use today in certain circles </plug>)

Emulation continued to fascinate me, so I got into writing simple NSF players and NES emulators -- which was my "in" for audio programming stuff. I wrote an NSF player plugin for WinAmp way back in the day called "NotSo Fatso". It was kind of buggy but it worked pretty well. There are better players out now but at the time it was one of the better ones.

After that I got back into game development, but never actually finished anything substantial.

Now that I'm working in front of a computer 8 hours a day I don't do much hobbyist programming anymore, sadly.


But anyway... how I learned was basically practice practice practice. Find something that interests you and learn how to do it. That was my approach. It may not be the fastest way to learn but it's very fun and keeps you interested.

[LimeOats]

I have an embarassing number of posts seeing as I just registered on this website a few weeks ago, but I've been lurking around here for many years.

It all began about 7 years ago when I was a freshman in high school. My school had an interesting IT department- they tried to lock everything up and track everything we do on the computers. I decided that I wanted to figure out a way around all of that to make an impact on the school. (I never really got anywhere with that). My very first programming was with Visual Basic Scripts. I used to write those little programs like msgbox("haaaaai"); and make it loop around so people had trouble closing it on the computers when I left. Little things like that.

I then started realizing how interesting programming could actually be. At this point in my life, I had been playing an MMORPG called Maplestory for a very long time. Around my sophomore year of high school, some geniuses had created Maplestory private servers in Java. This basically allowed you to host your own servers rather than playing on the ones hosted by the company who owns the game. I found this intriguing so I downloaded everything necessary to run my own. This included MySQL for database access, WAMP for hosting PHP files, which was the content management system for the game, and Netbeans for Java. These private servers were entirely customizable if you know Java and Javascript. I did not know either. I then taught myself very, very basic Java and javascript so that I could work on my server. I also ended up learning some SQL and PHPMySQL since that was involved too. All of these things showed me how interesting programming could be.

Once that was over, I didn't program too much stuff for the rest of high school. I knew I wanted to be a computer science major once I got to college, but I had nothing to really work on during high school programming-wise.

Once college came, it all truly began. I took my first ever programming class, which was basic C++. Since I had general knowledge of Java, javascript, and PHP, I knew most of the stuff for that class.
The next semester, I took a more advanced C++ course, as well as an assmebly language programming course.

Once that was done, I knew a lot about C++. During this first semester, I also got a job with the college website, which involved developing HTML and CSS. I learned a lot from this job.

Third semester of college (my sophomore year), I took a programming in Java course and a C++ Data structures course. Those, needless to say, got me very good in both languages. Fourth semester, I took operating systems, which taught me some C, a class on PHP and MySQL, and a class on ASP.NET.

I now consider C# to be my best programming language, and I am entirely fluent in all of the programming languages listed above.

_________________________

Now on another side of things- I am very interested in hacking. I always have been (well, ever since high school). Programming has helped me accomplish some things that I will not disclose in this post (especially with PHP... ;) ).

In short, I love programming. I'm only 19 years old and about to start my third year of college, and I like to think that I'm pretty good at it. I have a summer internship that pays very well, as well as a steady job for during the semesters at school that pays very well. Programming has gotten me pretty far in life, and it's going to continue doing so.

[zb0S216C]

When I was younger, around the age of 14, I wasn't all that interested in computers in general, only gaming. One day, I saw my uncle Jon repairing a laptop - at the time, I didn't have the foggiest idea about what he was doing, but it looked interesting. During the age of 16, when I was in High School, I began to mod GTA San Andreas. By modifying games, I got an insight into how games work (by reading data files and such). This inspired me a great deal, so I began using Python & Lua. After a few months of Python and Lua, I realised that their functionality was limited, and this bored me. I began searching for a more powerful language; I found C++. I knew for a fact that my school didn't have any programming-based classes and/or clubs, so I was on my own. At this point, I had finished school at the age of 16.

I began learning C++ with the guidance of Bucky (The New Boston). Shortly after, I became agitated and frustrated because I couldn't grasp C++. I realised C++ is a whole different ball game, so I decided to give C++ a rest for a month or two. For two years, I was on and off programming (because I was at college for 2 years). When I reached 18, I began to get serious with programming. I began to make progress with C++ since then.

After a few months had past, I felt as though I wasn't getting enough satisfaction with knowing what things are. I decided to dig deeper and explore the implementation of standard classes, such as std::vector, and see how they functioned internally - this was another world to me. When I started learning DMA, I became obsessed with memory & efficiency.

With knowledge of the inner-workings of standard containers and DMA, I put two-and-two together and thought "screw it", I'm going to make my own container. The first 10 or so attempts failed, but eventually, I got the hang of it, and since then, I've became fixed on implementing my own containers, and I've ignored the standard containers completely.

I've been programming for about 2:3 years now.

Need4Sleep wrote:

"Also, what tips would you give to someone like me that is such an avid learner."

Be patient. Programming isn't an easy subject and not for the easily confused. Start with a simple language, such as Python or Lua so that you can grasp the basic concepts of programming. Take your time when reading and be sure to explore the content of the text thoroughly until you understand what you're reading. Finally, make sure you're motivated - a lack of motivation will simply suck the life out of programming and could possibly deter you programming altogether.

_Wazzak

[Cubbi]

Wow, Albatross was doing some crazy things at the age of 9.

Since people from below 2k are posting, here's a brief from me as well:

How did you first start with programming,

My school (late 80s) had a bunch of PDP-11 clones (DEC PDP-11 was the top "small" computer of the late 70s / early 80s, which, pretty much, gave us C and Unix). Having tried (and failed) to build my own computer from parts previously, I self-taught PDP-11 assembly language while learning BASIC in class, and shortly thereafter was able to put together some demos for school.

why

I didn't know back then, but eventually I realized that I very much enjoy how something intangible, a bundle of thoughts, gains independent existence and gets the chance to do things to the real world: control hardware, move people's money, direct traffic, discover drugs, etc. I like that this bundle of thoughts keeps on running and reacting to the environment, and doing all those things all on its own. There are little pieces of me scattered through the world.

, and how long have you been programming?

Professionally since 1996 or so, although I only fully transitioned to C++ (from assembly languages and C), in 2005. I fell in love with C++ in 1999, shortly after the first standard, but it took a while to learn it, it was (and still is) changing rapidly.

[Need4Sleep]

Thanks for all the replies guys, really opened my eyes to the programming community, plus some interesting stories