Working in the tech industry day in, day out, we can become jaded to the reality of just how cool programming actually is. As humans, we've figured out how to get inanimate objects to calculate things for us:
I can vaguely remember how it felt the first time I wrote a program. I took C++ class and a Java class in high school and I think I took the Java class first. I remember that the syntax didn't make any sense to me at the time but I thought it was really cool how you could type something into the command line and your program could take your input and manipulate it and return a result.
I was really into creating text-based games and GUIs seemed way too advanced to even consider learning. I'm sure that's influenced my programming preferences today, as I still stick with languages that I mostly interact with through the command line (not too much web / graphical work for me).
Then, everyone got Xanga accounts (remember that, USA people?) and was trying to customise their profiles, so I started learning HTML and CSS. There were so many acronyms for different kinds of "cutting edge" web design at the time: XHTML, DHTML, etc. It all seems so quaint now.
What was your first coding experience like? Was it decades ago or last month? Was it nerve-wracking or exciting?
Oldest comments (92)
Not sure if it counts but ... mine was about three years ago at the grand old age of 31 when I stumbled into a job that had me using SAS for the first time ever. I was late to the game, very, very late to the game. Then I got hooked on SQL.
I tried JavaScript on a three month part time general assembly course two years ago thinking I was going to be a web dev ... and then went straight back to SQL.
That counts! If I had to choose between the two, I would probably also choose SQL over JavaScript. Domain-specific languages like SAS take a lot of heat from "real" programmers, but even things like making a complicated Excel macro count as programming, in my opinion. It's the same thought process, just funneled through a different medium.
That's a good way to look at it.
Building VLOOKUPs and Pivot Tables and IF statements in Excel is such a good 'launching off' point for junior data analysts. Teaching SQL concepts is a lot quicker with a bit of Excel background.
I am glad I said goodbye to SAS, it was used to move data around and not do any statistical analysis so was overkill for what was needed.
Oh, you know what? I forgot about how some kids in grade school used to program their TI-83 and TI-84 calculators. I never got into it, but I'm sure someone has coded DOOM for those things. I think BASIC and its variants are a first programming language for a huge number of people.
Year 6, aged 11, we had a BBC computer and a "twenty questions" game on it, where you would think of an X and the computer would ask you Yes/No questions to guess it.
I could tell it was nothing magic, just a big flow chart switching on to the next possible questions based on binary answers. It had a make-your-own option, so I made one for the class' favourite 90s pop stars and footballers of the day, with a feature at the end that if it did not guess their chosen celeb, they could enter its name and it would save the decision branches that had led there.
I didn't quite understand what I was doing, and the software itself must have offered some guidance, but what was important was that I understood WHY it was working and what was happening behind the scenes.
Then RPGMaker in the early 2000s, whereby it took me a day or so to program all the possibilities of opening a chest, acquiring the prize (and thus removing it from the chest) and adding it to inventory - if there was space. If, if else, else...
That sounds really neat! I think games and toys like that are a great way to get kids interested in programming. Then, work up to a language like Scratch before moving to something like Python.
I was ten years old, it was my birthday. 1988. I came downstairs to find my dad had bought me a ZX Spectrum. The rubber keys had arcane commands - push, poke, print - I bashed them and THINGS HAPPENED ON THE SCREEN!
What voodoo magic was this? Thus began a lifelong love affair - I wrote about it here.
That, for me, was the coolest thing. Not only that pressing keys "made things happen" (that's just what a keyboard does, right?), but that you could take input from the user and do things with it. I think it was that ability to automate things that really intrigued me.
Yes! Exactly this.
Error establishing a database connection
My first coding experience was when my friend introduced me to websites with Geocities. I don't remember some of the details of what I did first, but I viscerally remember the shock and awe that this was something I was capable of doing.
I knew that programs and websites got built somehow, but it was completely abstract to me. The realization that it was so accessible was absolutely mind-blowing.
I built my first website on Geocities too, using MS Word 98 (it had a website mode), good times, filled with gifs, JS snow and custom animated mouse pointers.
Ah! You just reminded me of Microsoft Frontpage! I forgot about that. Oh, the repressed memories...
I always used the web editor in Geocities. I don't think I had a home computer at the time so it was mostly school and friends' houses. I didn't really learn FTP or code editors or anything.
I'm truly cloud native.
Ahahah indeed, that was the cloud waaaay before we had that term coined :)
I had a relative in computers I asked for help setting up a Geocities/Angelfire like my friend had.
He refused to help me, gave me an account on his webserver Unix box, taught me to use FTP / set up Netscape Navigator's editor to publish to it, and, when I hit a wall with Netscape Navigator's editor, taught me how to edit the HTML of my page for finer-grained control.
Wouldn't help me with the fun unless I picked up some "real programming" along with the fun.
Set me up with an e-mail account on that box, too, and taught me to telnet to it and use Emacs to edit my mail when on someone else's computer instead of on a computer when I had ... boy ... there must've been a mail function in Netscape before Thunderbird came out or something... :-)
I didn't properly program for many years thereafter, but it was a great foundation for later learning. Mission accomplished, picky older relative!
The ability to add your favorite My Chemical Romance song as background music on your blog was the height of 😎 in 2007.
Geocities was my first experience too. My friend showed it to me and we talked about HTML and FTP and it was all so cool. The internet was really new to me at this time, ~1996, and it was amazing to see how websites were built and that I could do it myself.
Yep, I had a terrible Calvin and Hobbes Geocities page back in the day. Complete with 1990s marquees and "under construction" gifs.
I also made my first non WYSIWYG webpage in HTML4 to host the games I was trying to make in 3d Gamestudio. I don't remember what I used to host that page though or if it still exists anywhere.
Ah, the good old "under construction". Another thing from the early web that I forgot about.
And there were whole sites w/ great GIFs where you could get cooler "under construction" symbols & dividers than your friends had!
Or where your friends had gotten cool ones and wouldn't tell you about their source.
And wouldn't talk to you at lunch the next day if you just downloaded from their page and used the cool icon/divider on your page without their blessing.
Copying a MySpace theme from one of those MySpace theme websites, then figuring out how to remove the ad blocks from them... lol
And get rid of the watermarks / "copyright" at the bottom 🙄
I was 7 I think. My Dad came how with a ZX Spectrum and it was beautiful. Rubber keys, shiny box, rainbow on the side. It plugged into the TV and had a tape deck and we played Horace Goes Skiing.
Then I discovered BASIC
10 PRINT POO
20 GOTO 10
And in that one POO filled moment, I was hooked. My Mum even helped typing out listings from books and magazines because I was too young to have the attention span for writing hangman with graphics, but my love for programming stayed with me.
I recently paid my Mum back - my Dad has been playing with a Raspberry Pi and my Mum was talking fondly about how she enjoyed typing in those listings - so for her birthday 2 days ago I bought her her own Raspberry Pi and a Scratch/simple Python coding book to copy from!
🤣
That's great! Much more inventive than "asdf" over and over like I usually did when I started.
I've noticed that a few people here were introduced to computers via the UK's golden era in the 1980's: Sinclair ZX80, Spectrum, BBC Micro and the Dragon.
Of course there was Commodore VIC20 (we had fights at school as to which was the best Spectrum or VIC20) and Commodore PET, TRS-80 and something called an Apple II (though I never saw one, very rare in my circles in the UK).
I was the editor of both Acorn Computing (originally The Micro User) and later Acorn User magazines :-)
(My wife wants to point out that she was Managing Editor of Acorn Computing.)
I used to sneak through the library in grade school and type
10 print “/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\“
20 goto 10
on all of the C=64 and PETs. Nobody every figured out why thise darn computers got all buggy all the time.
A long time ago (39 years ago), in a country far far away (I'm in Canada now, was in the UK), my dad decided he had no idea how to write BASIC on his new Sinclair ZX80. I took the manual and read it for a week without touching the small black obelisk. I took the small block of plastic, the manual and cables into the dining room and connected it to an old black and white TV and turned it on. As a ten year old, it was incredible to see a white screen and a small flashing cursor, awaiting my commands.
Okay, I'm going to get the most out of this. I shall play a trick on my brother...
10 PRINT "WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"
20 INPUT A$
30 PRINT A$, "IS AN IDIOT"
40 GOTO 30
"HEY BROTHER... COME see what I did...."
Haha kids are really inventive when it comes to harassing their siblings!
It was like 2 years ago i think, on my youtube videos feed it appeared a vide called "Building a neuronal network with Java", and thank the universe i clicked on the video,i remember beeing facinated watching how a normal guy could tell a computer how to do something by its own!.
So i started learning in a Java environment, more focused on the design called (Processing), and i learned all that good stuff, and eventually i became a web developer.
Come back to the dark (Java) side!
Javascript wont let me go!.
C hello world program using code blocks ide
I forgot about Code::Blocks! That's a good one!
In the 90's, I remember typing BASIC programs from a printed magazine (Science & Vie) on an Atari STF! If think it was GFA BASIC ;)
atarimania.com/st/screens/gfa_basi...
Wow! Retro!
My first coding experience was when I first came a cross YoYoGames' GameMaker. They have a language built in there called GML. I remember being "scared" of for loops, because I thought they looked daunting.
It looks like GameMaker is still going strong!
At x-mas 1992 I was 7 year old and got an old Commodore 64 and this book. Later I got a few games for my C64 too (pirated using audio cassettes) but the damage was already done, I wanted to learn more.
Can't remember how I felt about it, but remember being disappointed that nobody else found it fascinating.
I grew up a little late for the Commodore 64, unfortunately. The first PC I distinctly remember using was Windows 98, right when it came out. I would play Lemmings all day on that thing. I have vague recollections of a computer earlier than that which was all command line (I think). Maybe plain old DOS?
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.