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  3. I started programming at age 13

I started programming at age 13

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  • P Paul Watson

    Crikey, my newborn is going to have to work hard to beat your age 4 starting date ;) So far she is more interested in spitting milk onto the keyboard than programming it.

    cheers, Paul M. Watson.

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    CPallini
    wrote on last edited by
    #28

    Unfortunately my child (age of 2 and half) is more interested in driving our car. :sigh: :)

    If the Lord God Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation, I would have recommended something simpler. -- Alfonso the Wise, 13th Century King of Castile.
    This is going on my arrogant assumptions. You may have a superb reason why I'm completely wrong. -- Iain Clarke
    [My articles]

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    • L Lost User

      Pete O'Hanlon wrote:

      Over 30 years ago.

      You must be almost as old as me. I started programming in the mid 1970's. Thinking of retiring yet ????

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      Pete OHanlon
      wrote on last edited by
      #29

      Richard A. Abbott wrote:

      Thinking of retiring yet ????

      There are a few years left in the old dog yet.

      Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.

      My blog | My articles

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      • L Lost User

        I was in school and my first project was making a stop sign that light red, yellow, green. I was using PC LOGO When did you start programming? And what was your first project?

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        Colin Angus Mackay
        wrote on last edited by
        #30

        I was 9 years old. I notice that too many people start when they leave school these days. That's sad.

        Recent blog posts: *SQL Server / Visual Studio install order *Installing SQL Server 2005 on Vista *Crazy Extension Methods Redux * Mixins My Blog

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        • C CPallini

          Unfortunately my child (age of 2 and half) is more interested in driving our car. :sigh: :)

          If the Lord God Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation, I would have recommended something simpler. -- Alfonso the Wise, 13th Century King of Castile.
          This is going on my arrogant assumptions. You may have a superb reason why I'm completely wrong. -- Iain Clarke
          [My articles]

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          Paul Watson
          wrote on last edited by
          #31

          The next Dale Earnhardt or Michael Schumacher eh :-D

          cheers, Paul M. Watson.

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          • L Lost User

            I was in school and my first project was making a stop sign that light red, yellow, green. I was using PC LOGO When did you start programming? And what was your first project?

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            Matthew Butler 0
            wrote on last edited by
            #32

            The first 'program' I wrote (if you call it a program) was when I was 7 in junior school, using a flowchart to control various motors and read from sensors etc... I believe the first build was a pedestrian crossing simulation. The first time I did some real programming was when I was 9 when I bought a PIC16F84 kit (I don't miss them at all) and made a light sequencer... the first time I actually used the PIC's machine code and wrote the .hex file directly. (Understandably I got a proper assembler soon after as the kit didn't contain one!) Then Delphi when I was 11, then C# at 13... my current choice.

            Matthew Butler

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            • L Lost User

              I was in school and my first project was making a stop sign that light red, yellow, green. I was using PC LOGO When did you start programming? And what was your first project?

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              t7bros
              wrote on last edited by
              #33

              I don't remember how old I was. We used LOGO in grade school. In high school I wrote a program in BASIC that drew a blueprint of the school and had a little sprite move through a roster of classes. Then it was C++ in senior year, followed by Java, .NET stuff, and C in college.

              Have faith in yourself; amateurs built the Ark, professionals built the Titanic.

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              • L Lost User

                I was in school and my first project was making a stop sign that light red, yellow, green. I was using PC LOGO When did you start programming? And what was your first project?

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                Lost User
                wrote on last edited by
                #34

                About 27 or 28 years ago. TRS-80 Model I with the Expansion Interface. BASIC at first doing simple things, then Z80 Assembler. Hand assembled until I finally got the Macro Assembler package. One of the first hand assembled things I made was a quick-sort that worked with BASIC strings. I sold this to a number of people. Then on to fun stuff like a Space Invaders clone, Asteroids clone etc. all in Assembler. Ah, the good old days, when screens were small and colour meant flickering screen buffers to get different shades of grey. Cheers, Drew.

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                • L Lost User

                  I was in school and my first project was making a stop sign that light red, yellow, green. I was using PC LOGO When did you start programming? And what was your first project?

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                  Lee Humphries
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #35

                  Worse yet - for one of my projects I hired one of the inventors of the LOGO language.

                  I am convinced that lobotomising users will make little to no difference.

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                  • C Colin Angus Mackay

                    I was 9 years old. I notice that too many people start when they leave school these days. That's sad.

                    Recent blog posts: *SQL Server / Visual Studio install order *Installing SQL Server 2005 on Vista *Crazy Extension Methods Redux * Mixins My Blog

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                    Paul Watson
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #36

                    About the second question I ask in interviews is "When did you start programming?" and if I get back "Oh, in college" I know I'm in for a painful interview. Sometimes I am surprised but by in large people who choose programming as a career on entering college are not ready to programme (in the field I work in) when they leave college. They make good formal programmers for big corporates who need implementors but they don't make good free thinking programmers. (Clarification; we need all types. I'm just not hiring guys who are bound by what they were taught parrot fashion in college.)

                    cheers, Paul M. Watson.

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                    • L Lost User

                      I was in school and my first project was making a stop sign that light red, yellow, green. I was using PC LOGO When did you start programming? And what was your first project?

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                      Ennis Ray Lynch Jr
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #37

                      My first stint with programming was with logo for learners in grade school. My first real programming was changing the parameters in QBasic Gorillas and Nibbles to make for more interesting effects. Then I convinced my H.S. C.S. teacher to let me write games instead of learn productivity software in my C.S. class in H.S. Then I dropped out of Advanced C.S. in H.S. when the teacher on the first day instructed us to open Mavis Beacon. In his defense he asked me why later and must have taken it to heart because he changed the curriculum and the class built a pinball machine instead.

                      Need software developed? Offering C# development all over the United States, ERL GLOBAL, Inc is the only call you will have to make.
                      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway
                      Most of this sig is for Google, not ego.

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                      • L Lost User

                        I was in school and my first project was making a stop sign that light red, yellow, green. I was using PC LOGO When did you start programming? And what was your first project?

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                        Michael Schubert
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #38

                        Part of me becoming an electronics engineer was to build a Z80 board with 2K of RAM. We got the circuit board and a sack full of components and had to solder it together. The keyboard consisted of the numbers 0-9 and the letters A-F which means that we programmed in HEX code. First program was a traffic light control (it always seems to be...).

                        modified on Tuesday, September 9, 2008 8:52 AM

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                        • L Lost User

                          I was in school and my first project was making a stop sign that light red, yellow, green. I was using PC LOGO When did you start programming? And what was your first project?

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                          John M Drescher
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #39

                          I believe it was 9 (and 1981) for me. I studied and turned a BASIC states and capitals game into a hangman game on a commodore vic20. The biggest part of this was understanding how the randomization routine worked and how to modify it for my purpose. I also remember using the fuzzy string match routine that allowed misspellings from that in several other projects.

                          John

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                          • P Paul Watson

                            About the second question I ask in interviews is "When did you start programming?" and if I get back "Oh, in college" I know I'm in for a painful interview. Sometimes I am surprised but by in large people who choose programming as a career on entering college are not ready to programme (in the field I work in) when they leave college. They make good formal programmers for big corporates who need implementors but they don't make good free thinking programmers. (Clarification; we need all types. I'm just not hiring guys who are bound by what they were taught parrot fashion in college.)

                            cheers, Paul M. Watson.

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                            Colin Angus Mackay
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #40

                            Well said, Sir.

                            Recent blog posts: *SQL Server / Visual Studio install order *Installing SQL Server 2005 on Vista *Crazy Extension Methods Redux * Mixins My Blog

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                            • A Anna Jayne Metcalfe

                              I know which machine you mean - I had one while I was at Uni (mine was the turbocharged version with 1MB of RAM!). :-\ It was CP/M+, BTW. Fun system to learn on, aside from the mono monitor.

                              Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"

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                              Simon P Stevens
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #41

                              found it[^] :) Ours looked very similar to the first photo. I remember having to turn the disks over to access the other side :laugh:

                              Simon

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                              • P Paul Watson

                                Ohhhh! You had breakfast, you lucky thing you. We had to get up before we went to sleep, eat roadkill for lunch, set our selves on fire to guide the planes into Heathrow before climbing into the jet engines to clean them with our tongues! You had luxury you did!

                                cheers, Paul M. Watson.

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                                J4amieC
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #42

                                Roadkill? Luxury! We had a handful of warm gravel, had to walk uphill both ways to heathrow airport, and when we got home our dad would beat us to death with his belt! Godwins law states that an online discussion will eventually refer to the nazi's or hitler. Whats the law called where an online discussion will eventually refer to the 4 yorkshireman sketch?

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                                • J J4amieC

                                  Roadkill? Luxury! We had a handful of warm gravel, had to walk uphill both ways to heathrow airport, and when we got home our dad would beat us to death with his belt! Godwins law states that an online discussion will eventually refer to the nazi's or hitler. Whats the law called where an online discussion will eventually refer to the 4 yorkshireman sketch?

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                                  Paul Watson
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #43

                                  Your dad had a belt? Luxury! Our dad beat us to death with Emily, the youngest of us! Then he'd call up the Germans and have them blitzkrieg our house just to make sure we stayed dead. Damned Nazis!

                                  cheers, Paul M. Watson.

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                                  • J J4amieC

                                    Roadkill? Luxury! We had a handful of warm gravel, had to walk uphill both ways to heathrow airport, and when we got home our dad would beat us to death with his belt! Godwins law states that an online discussion will eventually refer to the nazi's or hitler. Whats the law called where an online discussion will eventually refer to the 4 yorkshireman sketch?

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                                    Dalek Dave
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #44

                                    Recursive Pythonism?

                                    ------------------------------------ Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay. - Charles Dickens

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                                    • S Simon P Stevens

                                      I used to mess around with Logo on my dads Amstrad cpw pcw. Big ugly thing with the disc drive mounted on the side of the (black and green) monitor. Was probably around 9-10ish. I then started exploring the OS (it was some variant of CP/M[^]) and messed around with the source code of a few of the games (in Basic I think, but I didn't know that at the time). It was around 11 where I really discovered it though on my schools BBC micro and a 'program your own space adventure games' book. I spent ages copying out the code, for it not to work and having to spend ages checking through the 50 line program for my mistakes. The first game I remember getting working was kind of a text only version of the classic gorillas[^] Later was given an Oric Atmos[^] which I continued with for a while.

                                      Simon

                                      modified on Tuesday, September 9, 2008 8:49 AM

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                                      Nagy Vilmos
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #45

                                      Simon Stevens wrote:

                                      Later was given an Oric Atmos[^] which I continued with for a while.

                                      Har har! i can beat that. I started with an Oric-1[^]! Still gotit and it still works; as of last month when I sert it up and played a few games. 'The Hobbit' was the best commercial one, but I had a three line adventure game as well I found on one fo my tapes which was cool!


                                      Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done.

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                                      • P Paul Watson

                                        About the second question I ask in interviews is "When did you start programming?" and if I get back "Oh, in college" I know I'm in for a painful interview. Sometimes I am surprised but by in large people who choose programming as a career on entering college are not ready to programme (in the field I work in) when they leave college. They make good formal programmers for big corporates who need implementors but they don't make good free thinking programmers. (Clarification; we need all types. I'm just not hiring guys who are bound by what they were taught parrot fashion in college.)

                                        cheers, Paul M. Watson.

                                        E Offline
                                        E Offline
                                        eyeseetee
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #46

                                        Yes you make a good point. But the programmers who start when they are young or before College tend to lack the social skills that are needed such as communication and leadership skills. I agree with your arguement though.I dont think I have a complete programmer's mind, I more stumbled across the career path I am heading on.

                                        The answers posted by me are suggestions only and cannot be used in anyway against me.

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                                        • L Lost User

                                          I was in school and my first project was making a stop sign that light red, yellow, green. I was using PC LOGO When did you start programming? And what was your first project?

                                          D Offline
                                          D Offline
                                          Dalek Dave
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #47

                                          Started on ZX80, then 81 then Speccy, then BBC, then Northstar, The RM 380Z, then IBM XT, Then AS400 then PC's. Still want to have an ORAC type of machine that I can just ell it what to do. First program was a calculator, first big program was an Etch a Sketch, First work program was a Build Cost analysis device for land purchasing.

                                          ------------------------------------ Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay. - Charles Dickens

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