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How did you learn to program?

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MasonMac:
This is just a general (more so for steve) question to any programmers on this site if there are any (besides steve), when did you gain an interest in programming and how did it progress into actually programming?

sublight:
I always liked designing puzzles/simulations to solve, and my Dad moonlighted as a programer. The combination of wanting to be like my Dad and wanting to design bigger simulations than was possible with pen/paper gave me a strong interest in programing long before I was capable. Dad gave me a book on Basic when I was maybe 6 but I didn't have the background to understand any of it.

In practice I didn't actually learn to program until I got a TI-83+ graphing calculator for Algebra-1 and started messing around with the built in editor at home and in math class. An adhoc blend of trial, error, and instruction manuals led to my first Ti-Basic program, my first function, my first for loop, and then my first memory leak when I tried mixing my original crude goto statements with newly discovered for/while loops.

TI-Basic lead to formal classes on C/C++, Java, and software design theory in College which led to internships in IT departments for sink-or-swim introductions to real world scale programing which led to my current job as an embedded systems software engineer.

Panopticon:
I have always been pretty good with details and pattern recognition, but spent most of my life bopping around between dead end retail jobs and being unemployed, now at age 35 I got overcome with a powerful urge to not stand on my feet to work anymore and am taking programming classes at a local tech school and should graduate in a couple of months. We'll see if that translates into actually getting a job in the field but I am hopeful.

Erik L:
Back in the mid-80s my dad bought a Radio Shack Color Computer. You had to type all the programs in (or load them from a ROM cartridge or tape). That led to computers and electronics in general, and a job at Gateway 2000. Which led to a programming job internally. And on, and on. :)

Steve Walmsley:
I was selling computers in my mid-to-late-20s and became interesting in programming. I went on a 3-month full-time course to learn C on UNIX and subsequently picked it up on DOS as well, so I could write an assistant program for Star Fleet Battles. Somehow I got a job programming C++ on Windows 3.1 (I just read the C++ programmers guide - no google then). I was asked by my employer (Digital Equipment Corporation) to learn VB3, as I was writing VBX controls in C++ to be used in VB3.

To speed up learning VB3, I decided to write a simple system generator in my spare time for a pen and paper game called Starfire. I kept adding more and more features and that eventually become Starfire Asistant, which in turn inspired Aurora. So you could say I really started programming Aurora in 1993 :)

I relatively quickly moved through team lead, project manager, programme director, etc. and ended up running one of the UK's largest IT departments from about 2001-2004. Then packed it all in to play poker for a living :)  Once I went down the management track, I didn't get chance to do much programming (apart from Starfire Assistant in my spare time). However, when I played poker I had a lot of free time so that is when Aurora really took off and I got back into programming in a major way.

Once I went back into a proper job again (in 2011), my free time dropped off quite a lot so development is slower now than the noughties. However, I did start to pick up C#, which eventually led to the decision to create C# Aurora.

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