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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same!
Nobody is born to be anything.
I am a 15 year old still. All my life I've had the issue of not being interested in anything this world has to offer. I wouldn't read books if I didn't know if they were good (aka I rarely tried new books). I spent my time trying to waste as much as possible. I knew drawing wasted maybe 20 minutes (I wasn't good at it), so sometimes I just drew stuff.
But programming really is my one true interest. Discovered it at 11, and just never stopped.
It was a bit mixed with me.
I feel like I started a bit earlier than most devs I know, but I have the feeling that I'm not as smart as most devs.
I hope I make up missing intelligence by being more passionate than the average dev and having a bit of a head start, lol.
I bought my first computer, a C64, with 8. I played around a bit with BASIC, but didn't build anything much more advanced than a "hello world" with it.
Later I got a PC, when I was 11 or something, and did basically nothing coding related till I was like 14. Then I started doing some scripting and mapping (which also included scripting) for games like Duke Nuken 3D and Halflife. I also did some simple games with Flash, but nothing too big. I was more into the whole administration stuff back then. Build PCs, setup OS, tweaked the OS for games, setup some FTP servers and stuff for filesharing.
Wrote some IRC bots in mIRC-Script when I was 16 and did some websites in HTML/CSS in that year.
Later I tried some web stuff in PHP, guess when I was like ... I don't know 19 or so.
Got my first internship as web developer when I was 21.
First started thinking of programming in the first year of my university. My speciality is Information Security, but i didn't like the program so bad (there was no coding whatsoever), that i decided to start learning programming myself. Python as a friends recommendation, then freecodecamp, then i decided that i am into web development. Sieged Udemy and started eating frontend courses one after another. Currently learning React, still have no job, but whatever - i will struggle through.
I started coding when I was almost 17, I never though that I was born for that, I just wanted to study something related with computers and I realised that I sucked. At the beginning it was hard for me learning to code, 10 years later I think that I figured out how it works ;) and I'm still learning
We're all still learning 🙂
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. :)
I wrote my first program on 4th grade(10 years of age) in QBASIC while I was at school and I enjoyed playing it as a kid. The idea that I can write a program to make a computer find the HCF which the teacher had taught last week, when many people I look up to, including my parents, had no clue on how to operate this expensive thing which is called a 'Computer', was very exciting for this reason alone 🙂. And simply because I enjoyed it, the idea of making a computer do intelligent things, by typing sentenes partly english and math, stayed in my head from that time onwards and I had always tried to do it again whenever I could get my hands on a computer.
Today I work as a software engineer and I have often felt that because I played around with a programming language as a kid, I have had an advantage over many of my colleagues while learning a new technology or a language. I feel that thinking of a solution on abstract terms and implementing it in a language can never be a problem if we were familiar with code from childhood.
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 think starting early can definitely give you an edge but I dont think that is all you will need in the long run. It can just give you a headstart naturally. I started when I was 15 and compared to some, it is still like >= two years late.
Definitely no. I tried to write some programs with C64 at 80's but after few experiments it felt too much work with too little results.
One decade later I started to learn computer science at University just because there was work available at the field. Now I do like and love programming.
I don't think I was born to be a developer and to be honest I kind of hated it until last year. I didn't get the logic behind all that though I had programming classes in college during my graphic design degree. I was more of an "artist" kid and I thought "heck programming ain't art". I was so wrong but you gotta learn from your mistakes right?
Fast forward to when I dropped out of college (because graphic design was nice but I wasn't into it enough to study it, it was just a hobby), I was looking for opportunities and here in Belgium we have more and more training in programming. I started working as a workshop animator, my subjects of teaching were robotics, gender equality in computer sciences and programming. I fell in love with robotics and got into it. I realized I didn't have the time (now) to do a master in mechatronics and I found a 6 months workshop in mobile development (Android Studio, Xamarin, classes of Java and C# etc...)
Two months into the workshop and I still didn't know why I was there. I was the worst student of my class, not the best feeling if you ask me.
But then we started Android Studio and it was like a realization, a "click" in my mind.
I loved it, I loved the fact that I could try it immediately on my phone or on many devices through the virtual devices. Though with the web and so on you can also see a result, here I was mindblown by how dynamic, fun and creative it was. Though I am learning other things through my workshop (Xamarin and so on), I'm still working on my Android app. Best of all, I got an internship in the company I absolutely wanted to work for ! And I came to the interview with the shittiest code I've ever written but it was mine, and I did it will all my determination and need to improve.
So no, I definitely wasn't born a developer but I found my thing in the big pool of all the cool stuff you can do with development and I'm sticking to it. Starting is not easy, especially when you don't know what technology or thing you want to do but once you get it I think you can do wonders! :D
I don't think people are born for a certain type of profession. Usually the terms "born to be" and "some profession" goes in the same sentence, but people are actually differing in their overall mindset and the way they tackle problems and challenges. It is also fair to note that things which are interesting and are fun to do, are the things that we tend to get good at from an early age. I started programming from a very early age and it was really exciting for me to code. But I was also easily impressed with a lot of things, just like you so over the years I tried a lot of things that were fun, interesting and most important of all: Suited my mindset and way of thinking. In the last 5 years tho I decided to shift all my focus on development and programming and it is safe to say that I am doing very well. So your "Jack of all trades" way of doing things is not actually saying that you are "not born" for something. You just have a lot of priorities and did not spent enough of your attention on a certain thing ( like programming ).
I got introduced to computers in school, and after watching star trek, always wanted to be the guy who operated computers.
Got introduced to programming during my graduation days, and after that always wanted to write code.
I have not been coding since I was little. In fact, I only discovered coding right until before I decided to take a CS degree in college. I started coding by then (I was like 18, Im 24 now). I feel like we just need to define our own path. Learn as we go, and stop comparing ourselves to others. As long as you're doing the best you can, optimizing your own productivity and learning, you're doing ok. Don't feel pressured by trying to catch up with others or to try and be "ahead" of others. It's fruitless effort. Focus on yourself. Develop good habits and do the best work you can do. If you do that, you can't say that you were necessarily "born" to be a developer, but you were born to be a good worker, and that's good.