How old did you start programming?

[JLengi]

Yup, I started with the original 4.77 MHz IBM PC. No hard disk, just 5-inch floppies. First programming language: Basic. When we got a modem, it was a whopping 300 bps. (We bypassed the 110 bps acoustic couplers.) The comm software was written in basic. And FIDONET was probably more widely used than the Internet.

[Jeremy T Fuller]

I was actually 8 years old, splitting my time between a TRS-80 and an Intel 8086 (4.77 Mhz) using, like everyone else, BASIC on both systems. Boy things have changed since then.

[CodeAddiction]

As probably many did, I screwed around with QBASIC and DOS command "programs" when I was really young. Then, when I was around 14 or so, we got a computer with Windows 95 on it. I think I really started programming shortly after that, like the summer of '96 when school was out and I was at home, bored, Windows 95 was new, the internet was begining to boom, and I was screwing around with AOL. I would see people use programs in it to automate things in AOL (room busters, punters, mass mailers, etc). I had no idea that one program could control another like that and it really sparked my interest as to how it could do that. Looking into it further really started my interest in programming. Learning about windows messaging and the API routines that were being used by simple Visual Basic applications to do all that.

[ednrgc]

Atari 800XL, using BasicXL. Learned the machine in and out, and started programming games.

[tlw1145]

Bunch of children! Digital Equipment Corporation PDP 11/40 / Assembler - had 64 kB memory and 128 kb (yes Bytes) hard drive. and IBM 360 / Fortran and others (1973)

[Private_Void]

I started programming at 6 on a commadore 64. I was so young I think it was BASIC , but the syntax (barely can remember) was something like, FOR I=1 TO 5 PRINT I NEXT -> 1 2 3 4 5.

[maxblitz]

I was 17. My father hired me to write a Basic program to help him chart commodity prices. It was an IBM PC XT (I believe). Basic had line numbers and was not yet structured. I think the CPU was a smokin' hot 4 MHZ and the disk drive held a whopping "10 million pieces of information!" (bytes). -- Mark W:omg:

[Dan Neely]

I started with a trash80-color at around the same age. Didn't really go beyond ascii art generation until 5 or 6 years later in highschool with turbopascal.

-- Rules of thumb should not be taken for the whole hand.

[kurious]

1980: I was 7, programming in Advanced Basic (basica on the PC). Moved on to Pascal, then C and x86 ASM, then Java, Bash, Perl and now Python. I still work heavily with Python, Java, C, and ASM. Matthew Carpenter

[destynova]

Ernest Laurentin wrote:

- I started programming when I was 12yrs (w/ VIC-20 and commodore 64)(I still feel young though!) - Programming language: Basic, then..Assembler for Commodore 64

Hey, I started on a C64 too, when I was 8 or 9 - only with Basic though. Sure it was right there as soon as you booted the thing up. What an awful implementation it was, though... a slow, unresponsive interface, hardly any language flexibility, and weren't variable names only differentiated by the first two characters? Anyway, I didn't get too far with that. Not until I got an Atari ST a few years later and got into GFA Basic at some point - even by today's standards quote a nice form, I think. And a really graceful interpreter interface! Then I dabbled a little in C (Sozobon C, the PD compiler... fun) and 68k assembly and kinda stayed around that level until I went to college some years later and started with Java and C++. Fun times!

[andyb46]

April 1976 Fortran on an ICL 3100 using a teletype keyboard with paper feeding through. Ebarrassed when writing a do while loop without incrementing the loop variable causing infinite loop, took three full pages before control c interrupted loop.

[seggerman]

18 - freshman at college Basic on a PDP-11

Marianne G. C. Seggerman This above all, to thine own self be true and it follows as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man.

[TheLioness22]

You think that's a Youngster?? I started programming at about 13 using VB 6.0 - Now that makes me the youngster... -Leona

[tarrc]

Huh, I started on something like the IBM 5155, 10 Meg harddrive on an IDE card. Two 5 1/4 floppies and it ran DOS 3.2 I think. No mouse, no USB, just a cool green screen and a parallel printer port. :omg:

[CoolBreeze812]

300 bps modems and FIDONET...Oh the memories...the simpler times.:)

[SR Methos]

So long ago.... Started writing BASIC on a Vic20 (at the tender age of 11) then commodore 64, Timex Sinclair, TRS80 , TI 99 and then move up to PC XT,AT and so on. After BASIC, I moved on to PROGRESS for 10 years on main frames and PC . Now a days, i only program in WINDEV and will never look back. But i do really really miss my 64. I just loved that machine. I got really hooked on programming by a magazine(and i dont remember the name) that had a lot of info on the 64 and some language machine programs in it the you had to type in with a little program they supplied. I wish my kids would have something similar today Later all :) Methos

"When you have learned to snatch the error code from the trap frame, it will be time for you to leave "

[Mcsquare]

I was 21, my last semester in college as a Math major looking to get into programming when I could finally take my first computer course, Fortran. I had to type the program on paper tape, but the professor could never get the college computer(PDP 8) working. Luckily IBM hired me right after graduation and taught me DOS 360 Assembler language(this was the late 60's). I worked on the DOS supervisor (aka operating system) for the IBM 360/370 Mainframe computers written in Macro Assembler. Anyone remember what an "MNote" was??? Old and crotchety, but still codin'

[Mobile001]

I started programming with CMS-2Y in 1978 on a Sperry Univac AN/UYK-7 mainframe with the Military. It was great to get a TI-99 and hook it up to a 12 Inch Black and white TV as my Monitor and play with those sprites and Basic. There were two camps in the early to mid-80's...the TI hams and the VIc-20/Commodore 64 sluggers. Who would have ever know that my life's work has changed since being introduced to programming..oh so long ago. Lloyd:)

[tylermenezes]

Well, I am fourteen now, but I started around nine with VB.NET.

-Tyler Menezes CEO and Chairman of Programs and Websites and MyWebsFree.com "If a plane is on a convayer belt moving backwards at the same speed that it moves fowards, will it take off?"

[irotsoma]

I was 8 (Dos batch files) and 9 or 10 when I started with BASIC on an Amiga 1000 with a 1MB RAM expansion that was like 5 lbs.