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.
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Latest comments (45)
My first coding experience made me become a coder. It was with Logo. Seeing simple line creating boxes, circles etc was very amazing for a 8 yr old me. Earlier I used to play games only never bothered about how it worked. Creating game type designs with simple words was amazing experience 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.
When I played Minecraft and discovered mods 👍
What was your favorite mod?
Those mods doesn't exist anymore, but at the time there was many mods that motivated me : More Creeps And Weirdos, Mo'Creatures, Humans+, and so on :)
I write my first program in 1975 in IBM/360 macro assembler. It was powerful experience. I've been programming since. These days it's Rust and Swift.
Rust and Swift!? Interesting duo. How do you bounce between the two?
I use Rust for the Swift backend API.
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 ❤️
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!
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
Could you at least try to have a unique thought?
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.