This question has been floating around in my head for a while. I know I wasn't, I'm the kind of guy that likes to try everything, I'm just genuinely curious about lots of things and I feel like I am at least decent at them.
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I learned BASIC at age 8 with help from my father, copying code listings out of the back of his Sky and Telescope magazines and so forth. I discovered recursion by trying to port fractal generators from C books, wrote the kind of primitive games you'd expect a kid to write, tried and repeatedly failed to wrap my head around OpenGL (I think I got as far as rendering and moving the classic teapot). Minus the BASIC and anything having to do with graphics programming, I've kept it up ever since, dropping out of a CS degree program to work fulltime as a developer and now an architect.
I'm good at what I do, and that extra decade of reading, writing, and understanding code and computers has certainly helped. But I don't really think of it as being "ahead" of my colleagues. Even early on in my career, I might have been more acclimated to simply doing work on a computer and even more used to syntax conventions, but that didn't mean I understood source control or knew SQL. It's more like I had relevant but not always directly applicable experience. And of course, once you reach a certain point it no longer matters so much just how long you've been at it.
I am the same age as COBOL so childhood coding, as we know it today, wasn't really an option for me. I was greatly inspired by the 60's space program and learned a lot of math on my own, especially trigonometry as I got into model rocketry. My parents bought me a nice slide rule. From it, I learned not only math concepts but also the programming concepts of creating an execution plan, cursors and temporary storage. Around the same time, I also learned to type, another valuable skill now.
I think these 2 things helped me a lot when I wrote my first programs in the late 70's in a college math class. They certainly put me ahead of most people in my age group.
I first saw a computer when I was 10, I wrote my first Visual Basic application almost a year later after I bought my first programming book "Visual Basic for Dummies". Programming became a hobby for me when I was a kid and once I understand that I could do that for a living, that was my epiphany. I devoted my life to being a highly paid professional by doing my hobby.
I was super bored in college mostly because I knew lots of the stuff. Not everything of course but I was quite ignorant believing that I did.
I don't think that I was bord a developer neither that I am ahead of my colleagues. I do though have the advantage mainly because I don't feel like working and I enjoy spending time outside my 9-5 to learn new things and advance my self.
Does that answer your question though? :)
Absolutely!
Thanks for sharing your story :D
To be frank, I started programming making plugins for Minecraft, that was back when I was in the 9th grade. I'm a Junior in college now, and I a lot of my peers also started the same way! Although I've digress from Java in favor of languages like C++ and Python, I'll always have that Java experience from all those plugins!
No. I was born to "build stuff that requires creative ideation and hard work."
Software development was a perfect fit, but if I was born before computers, I'd have been something like a writer, architect or artist of some kind.
I started writing code in FORTRAN at age 9, at the same time I started learning and living in English, my second language. I didn't have a computer until age 14, so I need to write a lot of code on paper, though I could use a shared Apple ][ at a local department store at age 13, in 1978. So my first real experience of running and crashing code was at age 13, with Apple ][ 6K BASIC and the 6502 Assembler. My first C language experience was at age 20. My first real production level C++ and C# language experiences have begun at age 52 :), so I still need to learn a lot of things anyway.
Starting learning things at an early age has a distinct advantage. It will reduce unnecessary fear. Childhood experience is much easier to repeat at the later period of life. I still don't want to say, however, that I was born to be a dev. Writing code is essential part of my life, but that's not the only way to live it :)
Having learned old way of coding or problem solving can be an advantage sometimes, especially if you need to fix old equipment or a legacy piece of code. I don't think I'm ahead of my colleagues though because they know modern tools far better than I do. I know I need to learn a lot of GUI tools and Web design, and I'm in the process now.
It's nice to be able to earn some money by doing something I'm good at and like since my childhood, but that doesn't necessarily mean I don't have to learn new things; in fact, I always have to learn new things. It's hard, but fun. :)
I don't know if I was "born" to be a developer, but I did start coding from a youngish age - 14 in the mid 90s - mostly copying QBasic code listings out of books from the local library and then altering then to see what happened.
I then got a copy of VB4 later in the 90s and self taught some windows app development, in this case mostly trying to create copies of windows games I liked, such as Chip's Challenge.
I also always enjoyed playing with the level editor / modding tools in games and creating my own maps or scenarios.
At Uni I think this did give me an advantage, I had been exposed to coding before, it was not a completely new and strange thing as it was for some students on the courses I took, so I always got good marks in those papers.
Do I feel like I am ahead of my colleagues because of it? No. I just had a chat with a few devs in the team here and some did start programming when young, others learned it when they did their course at Uni etc, but I think all of us are quite skilled in what we do.
So just because I fiddled around making some games when I was a kid does not make me way better web developer today than my colleagues. That said I suppose these days exposure to coding at a young age cannot hurt and may be helpful if kids want to go on to be developers in the IT industry.
Well, I'm 16 now, so I guess I can say I've been coding since I was little (because I'm little now :) However, I can't answer the second question, as I've never worked with another programmer.
Nope, definitely not. I wanted to be a doctor ever since I was a kid, but when I went to Highschool, I found out it took forever to become one...and a lot of money. My parents were getting old (they still are), so I just chose anything. I was into MMORPGs at the time, so I opted for Computer Science (LOL)!
Good for me that I ended up liking my profession anyway. :)
My favorite toy as a kid (around the age of 9/10) was a rock!
Rocks are everywhere. Believe me, they are everywhere, I have held them, weighed them in my hand, swung them. They are everywhere.
However, the rock that I'm talking about was slightly bigger than my hand, smooth as marble, and shined in the sun.
When I found it, and after using it, I took it home and begged my mother to let me keep it indoors. Why couldn't I just chuck it somewhere outside? Because others would take it!
I'm not crazy!
All my past time (all the time I wasn't in school) I spend outside, and one of our favorite games was: a two-player game. Each has a rock. The first player throws his, the second player has to aim and touch the first players rock.
Now that you know the game, you realise I wasn't crazy. Finding the perfect rock that fits perfectly in your hand and it's just heavy enough to accommodate your swing was very hard. (Didn't The Dude have a bowling ball he kept home as well?)
I won few games with it, till someone banged his rock on mine so hard that my rock broke in half (even its insides were shiny :) )
So, hell no, I wasn't born to be a developer.
And you know what? Whenever I hear or read about amazing programmers that were born with a motherboard in their lap, I think of my childhood and, honestly I don't envy them at all. I also read comments like "it's not fair, others started early", or "I'm 12 is it too late". I think, I love programming, but I love my past!
I think at some point everyone should become a programmer! Virginia Woolf of all people, helped me realised I'm lucky to be a programmer. She wrote a diary entry about a lonely old woman that can't read or write, as a result when ever V met her, the old woman has the same things to say. V says if the old woman could read and write she'd have a richer life.
I know a lot of people that come home from work and just watch TV, or worst, they fall asleep with the TV on, I believe that would have been me if I wasn't a developer. Being a developer, banging my head against the wall and talking to the keyboard like a madman when code doesn't do what I need it to, has made me more curious, and more willing to be mentally active - even when I'm not coding, and even physically active.
Back home, when people retired everyone was kind of sad, "what will he do now!" When I came to UK, one of the support workers at school, computer savvy, retired. He had a radiant smile in his face as he spoke of his little shed with few computers and the plans he had.
Anyway, I wasn't born to be a developer, but I'm glad I'm one. And, I'd love to try my hands at other things at some point too.
(You should read @lpasqualis article 10 Top Reasons To Have a Career in Tech, especially points 5 through 10 relate to what I'm trying to say)
What an amazing story! Shut up and take my
follow.This is the funniest thing I've read all day. Great job.