Assembly is really fun to fiddle around with, and its good to know, at times, whats happening behind all this high level layers that hide everything nowdays. I remember back in the DOS days where we created graphics using the VGA mode( mode 13h anyone? :P )

Anyhow, those days are gone, and thanks god we got XNA and DirectX :)

digitalerr0rDCC:

Assembly is really fun to fiddle around with, and its good to know, at times, whats happening behind all this high level layers that hide everything nowdays. I remember back in the DOS days where we created graphics using the VGA mode( mode 13h anyone? :P )

Anyhow, those days are gone, and thanks god we got XNA and DirectX :)

I second that and after having taken a class on Assembly in college, I have a whole new respect for those people that were really talented at writing it (John Carmack most notably comes to mind)... I think it was more helpful for me to understand what was going on in the background but I doubt I will ever write anything in it again.

"I doubt I will ever write anything in it again"

Thats pretty usual ;) I dindt think I had to do it either at first but you never know what comes up ;) suddenly you have a tiny module that needs to be implemented with assembly, or inline assembly.

Assembly aint that hard really, but you have to think in a different way, and comment a lot :P

Anyways, this is a little offtopic.

I'm 17 now and I was only 15 when I started programming, so I really haven't been at it too long. I started off with "Game Maker" and the only language I could use was the GML (Game Maker Language) so I don't really know if it counts.
I'm learning C# now out of book and from a few of my more savy friends we don't really have alot of places that offer those classes out here in the sticks.

Xenopren:

I'm 17 now and I was only 15 when I started programming, so I really haven't been at it too long. I started off with "Game Maker" and the only language I could use was the GML (Game Maker Language) so I don't really know if it counts.
I'm learning C# now out of book and from a few of my more savy friends we don't really have alot of places that offer those classes out here in the sticks.

Heh, I kinda went down that same road.

I started when I was 20 and have been programming since then, so 5 years.. I know Java and C# :)

I was 19 when I started programming. I started off with C++, and I used Perl, Java, and HTML at work. Im 25 now. But no where near as good as I should be because I didnt practice all the time.

I turned 15 last month ive never really programmed very useful programs yet. I started on my birthday and have a clear understanding of what these are a class object~2c method~2c public~2c void blah de blah~3cbr /~3e ~3cbr /~3e I really would like to learn more XNA though~2c i did the 2d tutorial~2c it~27s just so unclear and fast that it~27s hard to follow~2c and he doesn~27t give descriptions of whats actually gopin on~2c let me know where you started and any good XNA learning resources you know of please~2c i just placed an order for xna xtreme 101 off the 3dbuzz website. it~27ll take 2 weeks to arrive though~2c but i really just wanna get started~2c so anyone know where there are follow along tutorials for makin some more games until ma DVD arrives~3f ~3cbr /~3e

I've Been Programming for a while, Currently i'm 15 Years old... Most of my time wasn't spent programming games, or anything usefull, at one point i used those Drag and Drop tools (Game Maker)
I liked programming because i thought it would be cool to make something and show it off and say that it was my work, and i still think that...
I know A Few languages : VB and VB .net i know pretty fluently as far as syntax goes, C# and C++ are similar, i didn't do much c++ or C# programming.
I look back and i play the old games, and all the stuff easily done today, was written by putting CPUs to the fullest potential! (Like Wolf3D the first Colored Texure mapped 3D FPS!)

I Learned a bit of Visual Basic 6 (a bit different than what vb.net is today) from my brother when i was 6 or 7... when he was in high school, (we have an 11yr age diff.)
It wasn't much. i made an msgbox program and once.

I Think i was 8 or 9 when i wrote a Very Small Word Processor,
Not as advanced as you think. If You Pressed an icon of a colored pencil, that was the color of your text. and it saved using rtf. It only used the RichTextBox controll and you can save with it...

VB Makes things real easy... I Learned how to do it in some book my brother had called "Programming in Visual Basic 6.0"...

I Got my hands on Visual Basic 2005 Express which was cool that Microsoft Gave their products for free and none of the things we don't need.

I Got Intrested in making video games on Pc at 9, when i got Game Maker, i never made anything usefull. Just a Point and Click Dog Catching game, the dog moved randomly after each click.

I really wanted to learn how to program like using real code (C++ or VB). I barely tried SDL or allegro, Later i came to XNA, it was a bit harder when i first found it. when XNA 1.0 (not the Refresh) came out.... I stopped using XNA, It's a Good Framework and all, but the PC is more Flexible, as well as the libraries, which some will give me the Easier Distribution Size :)

Now I moved to SlimDX (With VB .Net) support. Hopefully i'll be making more stuff with it ..

I just got start about 15,

at first with visual basic, then moving to web programming in which lots of stuff (javascript, html, perl, php),
then I decide to go to the system which I got c/c++ on linux and windows,
after that I turn around again to game programming which I start with c++ with the book named "Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX, 2nd Edition by Jim Adams", but I didn't get it all at the first place and in fact I dont complete the whole book.

At that time I thought I need some more ground basics on all the graphics stuff, I luckily found the book named "Developing Games in Java, by David Brackeen".
It tooks me all the day-long to sit in front of my notebook and start implement something low-level.
I create 2d engine with that book, do some projects and start thinking to myself "I'm I invest my time too much on the reinventing things?".
The answer is yes, and at that time, I found xna. Right then I start jumping again to that, and working on xna with c# ever since.

Now I'm 20. And I'm happy with my learning curve right now.
Thanks

I was about 14 when I first started programming, but I didnt get into it that much until about 3 years ago when I was 16.
I went from programming in qBASIC to VB, then VB.net and now I program in C and C#. When I started C# was when I started using XNA.

I was about 8 when I first started to program. I didn~27t do anything serious until I was probably about 10 or 11~2c and now I am 14.~3cbr /~3e

I am 13 years old and I started programming 2 days ago. I hope I get better at this though, it involves a lot of work, but I want ot be commited.

I'm 30, began programming when I was 17, and started dabbling with XNA almost 2 years ago.

38/11

Started with Apple II's running Turtle Basic, AppleSoft Basic on IIe, VaxBasic on a Vax 11780 (bonus points if you have an idea how big that machine was ...) Fortran 77, PASCAL,  C on Vax and Mips, C++, MS VC++ 4 & 5,VRML(college project), XML, HTML, MS VS 6, J++, Java, straight to VS 2008 and figured on trying out XNA to "kick the tires".

P.S Jim something like ....

    10 FOR X = 7676 TO 7689
    20 READ A
    30 POKE X, A

I'm 28 and I just started a month ago.  It's a lot of fun so far.

I'm 22 now. Started coding for real in early 2001 -- I guess I would've been 13 at the time. VB6 first, C++ shortly afterwards. Picked up a lot more on the way...

44/14

My first computer was a Commodore PET 2001-8 with 8K RAM :-)
I hold a M.Sc. in Computer Science since 1993. Have worked mostly with robotics, artificial intelligence, image analysis and computer graphics.
I made my first games on the PET and has continued this as a hobby ever since. Never released anything to a larger community though.
But that will soon change :)
I expect to release a platformer XBLCG during this summer. So stay tuned ;P

Btw. This seems to be a really cool forum. I'll try to contribute the best I can in the future :-)

24 now. Started about 10-12.

Got interested around 10, read some books at the library and used bookstores about Logo and BASIC. Got a dinky Vtech thing with a four-line text-only display and a BASIC interpreter (I had to use LIST and RUN like an old man! And line numbers!), then a 386 with QBASIC.

Moved from QBasic to QB 4.5. Added ASM (x86) to squeeze more life out of it (graphics libs, EMS/XMS, mouse, etc). Finally learned a real language (C/C++). Learned HTML, CSS, Javascript as the web evolved. Perl around 2001, moved from Perl to PHP about 2005. Picked up Actionscript, XML, and (my)SQL at some point to extend web development. Now considering jumping on the RoR bandwagon, as well as obviously the C# .NET one.

Oh yeah, wrote a little LSL in my foray into Second Life (Stay away from it, it's garbage)

I'm mainly interested in web development these days (AJAX-y/DHTML-y PHP or RoR web apps), but C# .NET doesn't look too imposing to me, so I'm here looking into it and seeing if I can't make some neat '360 community game

PS: I always thought the homebrew and emu scenes were cool and I always thought it would be fun to write z80, 6502, and ARM ASM. That's probably quite a perverse sense of 'fun', I know :) (never did get into it though)

Duffman:

Silvercube:

This course introduces students to problem solving techniques used in programming such as algorithms; pseudocode; top-down, structured and modular program design, program tracing; testing; and debugging.

You'll learn best practices for designing and testing applications and how to debug them (find errors). You'll probably do a lot of conceptually walking through programs and perhaps then be left to code it yourself. It's always a good idea to understand the problem and solution before just writing code.

In order to reinforce these concepts in a concrete matter, students will develop programs using the C++ programming language. They will implement programs using input, output and variables; utilizing programming control structures such as looping, decision and function calls.

Have no idea what that means :(

C++ is a lot like C# except it gives you the ability to cause a lot more trouble :)

You'll learn how to take input from the user and display results back to the screen. You'll learn basically all the foundations of programming and then how to use them in C++.

All in all, it sounds a lot like my first programming classes (also in C++).

Thanks, Duffman :)

I'll be emailing my Professor about this course closer to when the Summer Session begins.

I'm 26, started programming at the age of about 9 or 10 in Spectrum 128k BASIC (helped no doubt by having several older brothers, all technically minded), mostly little text adventures.  We later moved onto Amiga AMOS basic a few years later - it was a long running joke that we never really finished any of the dozens of games we started - creating the engine was the fun part, the content less so.

At 6th Form I picked up Pascal, which seemed like the happy antithesis of C and all its dirty little hacks.  I may eventually have gone down the Delphi route had it not been for C#, which is easily the best language I've used.  My only other speciality is a little-known proprietery, high-level language called EDGE, which is a verbose, GOTO ridden mess and makes COBOL look good. 

Probably started to program around 12-13 yo. I'm 25 now and work as a Software Engineer, mostly in C# and C/C++.
I've been working alot with DirectX but lately I've been using XNA for game programming projects. I think it's a great platform, specially if your just starting out.

I am 15, turning 16 in October this year.

When I was about 9 years old, My dad first introduced me to something called "QuickBasic" which was Microsoft's simpler version of BASIC I guess you could say.  I probably fooled around with that for about a year, I discovered tons of different things you could do with it and I actually made some games that I could run in DOS.  These were very simple games though.  I look at them  now and I could probably rewrite them and make them better all in a few hours.

After QuickBasic, I found an advertisement for something called DarkBASIC Professional, I checked that out and got into it a little bit, however I didn't know such thing as DirectX existed and I was still using colored pixels to make really crappy games.  For a good long period between the time I was 11 and 14, my IQ probably went straight down, I never did anything productive, my grades in school weren't exactly the best, because I wasted my time away on an MMORPG called RuneScape (which I greatly regret ever even THINKING about playing)

Last summer, I had a summer job and in my freetime when I wasn't working I further dived into DarkBASIC Professional, and made a 2D space invaders clone, a 2D 1945 clone and then I started a 3D platformer game but completely shot down out of the air when I realized I suck at 3D modeling.  Over the first semester of school (September to December 2008) I tried to learn C++, but some of the object-oriented concepts I wasn't understanding at all, so then that kind of died down.  When I found out about XNA, I pulled out a C# book, Head First C# and I am currently working through that book!  I definitely understand a lot more of the object-oriented stuff now, because of Head First C#.

Can't really remember when i started programming....probably at around 10 yrs....i started in foxpro for msdos, then libertybasic, then c# (i learnd all this coding stuff myself because at that age i didn't knew too much english (or at least not the technical programming terms)).

I am 27 years old now and began with the basics when I was 14.  Boy it was different back then lol.