I'll go first. Honestly, the first time I touched a computer was when my parents brought home an Apple ][ Plus computer at around 1986 I think it was. They had no idea how to put it together. I took one look at it and figured out how to hook everything together and it was like magic.
The video featured above, although not my own, resonates perfectly with the thrill that surged through me at that moment. The feeling was simply electric. Alongside the computer, I was presented with a set of four programming books on Apple Basic and some software. My curiosity led me to dissect and understand the code visible on the floppy disks.
In my excitement, I modified and personalized the pre-existing commercial software by editing its code. Although, on one occasion, I messed up with a program due to the absence of undo options in those times. However, every step of this process felt like magic and marked the inception of my journey into the world of development.
If you enjoy my technology-focused articles and insights and wish to support my work, feel free to visit my Ko-fi page at https://ko-fi.com/philipjohnbasile. Every coffee you buy me helps keep the tech wisdom flowing and allows me to continue sharing valuable content with our community. Your support is greatly appreciated!
Top comments (45)
The magic moment for me was when I created a website for my alma mater's food pantry. This was during a time where I was in a CS undergrad program but I didn't know what I wanted to do. After this project I decided to be a front-end software engineer.
What was your first tech stack?
Not really a tech stack, just made it with simple HTML/CSS and a little bit of JavaScript. I was beginning to work on web development, so I was trying to learn how to make a website from scratch.
Sounds like pancakes, that’s a stack!
Didn't think it was a stack lol, but thanks!
Back in 2008 (I was 12yrs old), I use to play a lot of online games, I was curious about how online games were made and I investigated a lot, then I started creating my own game, first with JavaScript, then I was programming in java and c#, by 2012 I started downloading and decompiling SWF of online games, to change the server URL in the client files, pointing to my localhost and then started creating a server emulator.
After a while I found myself and some friends in an online community, investigating how to apply
Logjam exploitin the Diffie–Hellman key exchange to perform theMan-in-the-Middle attackfinding 512-bit primes used for connection encryption (we nailed it), and I started intercepting and decrypting packages via a proxy logger, so we can now create accurate server emulators for online games with TLS encryption.After that, later on ... I became a software programmer, creating and securing servers from attackers (like I used to be lol).
Two moments stand out...
the first was building a geocities website to showcase my LEGO mindstorms robots (I'm using that word generously) and emailing "webmasters" about how they aligned text next to images (spoiler: it was CSS "float").
The second was creating an AOL instant messenger bot (again, generous) that was a high schooler's patchwork of different Perl libraries glued together until it could respond to very specific commands like
/weather [zip code].I bought my first computer around 1983
I writen my first dual player spaceship arcade game with z80 assembler, used tape recorder as storage device. Every times need to be load assembler, and writen code before do any improvement on my program. Before execute good to save, I remember the voice of binary datas.
But the magic moment which is lead me to be developer is around 1977 when I saw first start wars movie as 8 years old boy. After movie I created startegy game from paper. Smaller spaceship is 1x1 cm, galaxi is around 1m2 board - also from paper. Really easy rules turn based "galaxy war" was my first "project". Maybe somtimes I will recreate that game online version.
Wow I took a Vic 20 home from school in 1982 and write my first game of pong. 😉
That sounds so awesome! Thank you for sharing this!
I wrote this related article where I say that there is NO external gatekeeping that makes sens for being a "real" developer.
Like for playing piano, the real test is whether you are ready to put all the necessary practice
The question is not whether everyone SHOULD learn programming.
The real question is whether YOU really WANT to keep programming for the long term
"Everyone Should Learn to Code" is Bullshit
Jean-Michel Fayard 🇫🇷🇩🇪🇬🇧🇪🇸🇨🇴 ・ May 3 ・ 4 min read
In order to finish and graduate elementary school we had to prepare a big project that we will defend (not only IT related). As I was in love with WoW back then, I've created a board for my guild to schedule raids, discuss things etc. I liked the thing so much, I got immediately hooked on programming, chose an IT-related high school and I'm programming since then
I was trying to find myself and my purpose..... i had no idea what career path i wanted in life. till i went for a computer training at a cyber cafe. i was really interested and decided to study computer science in college... still in college and now i'm a junior developer. It was the best decision i ever made.
Ugh I hate the word junior developer. You’re a developer! You’re one of us :)
There is definitely merit in that position, but consider some counter arguments about why having the distinction of "junior developer" is a good thing.
I'm not saying that either of us is right. I just wanted to temper your stance by pointing out some of the benefits of the distinction between junior and senior developers.
proudly a DEVELOPER!!!!! thanks for the correction
I always loved computers since I was a kid, but I also wanted to study medicine since I was a kid, I chose medicine, I realized I had made a mistake when I was half way through my career but I decided to finish either way.
After 2 years working as a physician I decided to change careers and the magic moment that made me say "This is it, I found my passion, I want to be a programmer/developer" was when I built my first website, a portfolio page for my freelance translation projects, using only HTML and CSS ❤️
When I was a kid, my dad had an 8086 that he built himself. Monochrome AASCI screen, giant floppy disk, DOS shell, the works. I made do playing Pac-Man in a maze made of # characters, Pac-Man made of alternating < and - characters, etc. When the Commodore 64 came out and some of my friends got them, I asked my dad if I could get one too. His response was to build a colour graphics card and two simple joysticks, and then tell me that if I wanted to play games I would have to design and write them myself. I actually hated computers for a long time after that, lol.
Fast-forward to my early married life. I was working as a prepress designer for a local printing company, and at home I would surf the net, which at the time was very simple. Then Netscape Navigator version 2 came out, and they introduced table cells with background images, and JavaScript, and I started to get excited at what I was seeing. I started noodling at home on little experiments, and the IDE I was learning on at the time was by the original maker of ColdFusion, which introduced me to the concept of server-side programming.
I was hooked after that. And it seemed like my early childhood introduction to the concepts of software design paid off. I wrote a little intranet app for the printing company to digitize some of their processes, which was a big hit, and when finally the company was acquired and everybody was laid off, I chose to take the leap and start applying for work as a web developer. I’ve been at it ever since.
My journey to becoming a developer wasn't mapped out. In fact, it came to fruition organically from my experience as a Blogger and SEO expert. Initially, my prime focus was content creation and keyword optimization. As I delved deeper, I began recognizing the power of data-driven decision-making in optimizing the user experience.
I was already proficient in analyzing data, constructing SEO strategies, and following Google's ever-changing algorithms to keep my blog up to date. Yet, the more I explored, the more I was drawn towards the complex world of development. I started to learn about coding languages, frontend and backend development, and the intricate balance of form and function on the web. I invested in self-paced learning courses, attended seminars, and followed industry leaders to keep abreast of the latest technological advancements.
The magic moment? It arrived when I manually corrected a coding error that had been hindering the SEO of my blog. The thrill of having directly improved the functionality and thus the performance of my site was unparalleled. I knew then that I wasn't just a blogger or an SEO expert anymore. I was a developer in the making, combining these fields to create a holistic digital strategy. My journey was unconventional, but it's been rewarding and transformative, igniting a passion for tech I never knew I possessed.
A magic moment for me was after damaging a laptop I had in my backpack after taking a fall. The laptop had a touch screen which had become cracked. The damaged screen thought it was receiving touch inputs along the cracks, which made the cursor snap over to it.
At the time, I didn't have much money so I wanted to avoid repairs. The laptop had a Linux distro installed on it so I did some research and wrote a script which would disable the touch screen when the laptop would start. Writing that script made it so I didn't have to get a screen replacement. That's when I realized just how useful coding can be as a skill.
This started me on the path (probably around 1981):
And this gave me a turbo boost in 1983:
Wow this is such a memory trip! And so freaking late 70’s early 80’s.
My Dad hired a tutor to teach me HTML + CSS when I was like in the 8th grade.
Then in the 10th grade, I bought a book on C++ recommended by my cousin because I showed interest in programming. But I never understood it nor wrote a single line of code.
I was confused about whether I should major in Civil Engineering (because my Dad has his own construction company) or pursue Computer Sciences (my interest). My mom pushed me to pursue my passion.
I was still not that vested in coding until I took Harvard's CS50 in my 6th Semester(LOL). The first lecture of that course was the magic moment for me!
For me, it was when I spotted a dusty copy of "Your first BASIC program" by Rodney Zaks in my dad's "workshop" when I was young, I think around 11 or 12 years old. I don't recall what made me want to read it, but I think I was already into DOS games by then and I was certainly an avid reader.
But the addition of the fun, comic-style characters that personified each of the programming concepts made it a perfectly understandable programming book for me and it wasn't long before I started playing around with QBASIC and then later, Visual Basic, after I read one of those huge programming books from the library cover-to-cover without even having a copy of Visual Basic to practice on. Luckily, my dad's IT guy at his office was able to hook me up and I went on from there.
Next I believe I read "C for Dummies", which had a great mix of humour and sound technical content in approachable language. Then some C++ books, combined with noodling around with C and C++ on computers and I ended up studying Computer Science at university and went on to get a web development job straight out of uni. In my second job, I got exposed to Javascript (and jQuery) and fell in love with the frontend part of coding, which I have been doing professionally for over 11 years now.
That moment never occurred. I just left a programmer.
Did you say Hello World upon ejection??
Yes... It was written (punched) within all my projects... :)
got pics??