The premise of this thread is simple:

How old were you when you began. How old are you now. What language did you start with, and what language(s) are you using now?

I began when I was 15, I'm 17 now. I started with C++, and today, I pretty much only use C++/C#, but I only know how to use those two very fluently.

I'm just curious =P

My programming progress began at 18 and  I'm now 38.

I started with pascal on a mainframe, then Fortran, then in DOS I went through varietys of turbo pascal, snippits of assembler, C++,  in Windows I've used C++ & been using C# since around october.  I continue to maintain old programs (runs ancient lab equipment) in pascal.

I accomplish what I need, eventually, but I wouldn't say I'm fluent in any of them. 

Best,

Byron

I was 12 (1979) when I went to a school that had a single RM 380Z - Learned basic on there after school with the one teacher who had any idea.

1980 the school got a Pet 3xxx series - more MS Basic

By the time I left that school in 1983 they had a room full of BBC computers - even more MS Basic - and official computer classes.

From age 16-18 my school had Apple IIe's (basic) and some very early IBM clones where I learned Pascal.

At home I watched jealously as people got ZX80s, ZX81s, Commodore 64s, Acorn Atoms and ZX Spectrums and eventually persuaded my parents to get me a Dragon 32 (more basic and 6809 assembly language - hand assembled on paper because I couldn't afford to buy an assembler!). You youngsters with just Mac Vs PC have no idea what a big deal havng the 'right' computer was back then... (The Dragon 32 was not the cool computer - I wish I could remember what it was that made me want that one. It did have the best version of donkey kong and a proper keyboard)

Once I got to University I did more Pascal on some dumb terminals connected to Vax of some sort, C on Sun work stations, Z80 assembly in hardware classes and a few esoteric functional and logical languages. Got myself an Atari ST which I did C and 68000 assembly before discovering beer and woman and programming as a hobby kind of faded away. I had summer jobs for the government doing Fortran IV and Fortran 77 for those 3 years - they eventually let me write some C for a graphics board add on for a Sun workstation. This thing cost $70,000 and did real time solid shaded 3d graphics. Its was less powerful than the worst DX9 card available today for $20 on ebay.

Once I started work I've done C (windows, linux, mac), 68000 assembler, Cobol (thankfully little of this), Lisp on a Mac, C++, Visual Basic (3,4,5,6,7) and finally C# and VB.Net. Don't forget several years of web development with VBScript/JScript and lots of SQL of various flavours too.

Now I'm 40... so I guess I have been programming for 28 years... and you can probably see why I think people who argue over which language is better than others are just inexperienced n00bs who need to get out there and get a job ;-)

Haha. Great post, Z ^_^

Yeah, I don't really have any bias towards any language. Sure, there are language I like, but like this imaginary "console" war, I'll have preferences, but won't really "take sides", per se. All a programming language really is, is just a tool. A tool you use, and exploit to accomplish a task. If you stick, or "take sides" with any language, you're a dote =X

I'm also curious as to how it was when you were starting out. Because I'm just beggining, and seem to be running in to a few frustrations here and there. These last few weeks have been nothing but addiction to be. I eat, sleep, and drink code. I'm working on my project during any available hours, up to the point where my body just shuts down.. I want to keep going, but my body gives. When I'm resting, I sometimes bang my head in to my pillow until I get ideas, and inspiration. When I'm in the washroom, I think about how to optimize my code (which, at this point, doesn't really matter. Just Geddit Done! =P), and I have sheer moments of brilliance when I'm using the facilities =P

But uhh, I'm guessing everyone has gone through some of these frustrations. I don't expect myself to make anything epic anytime soon, but the learning curve is going excruitatingly slow for me, and sometimes I just want to pull out my hair for various reasons. I don't get angry, just a little frustrated at myself, not my code. And just want to keep going and going and going. But I guess it'll take time =]

So, did anyone else share similar experiences when they were younger?

EDIT: And just for reference, I haven't taken a single programming course yet. Save Comp Sci. last year, but I was pretty much a secondary teacher there. They had nothing to offer =P But m'yes, totally home-bred.

I first programmed in BASIC on a Commodore 64 by following a script when I was 8 (at a computer day camp). I am 33 now.

After that first experience of entering a program and seeing it run, I taught myself to program using a syntax manual. I learned the fundamentals by making simple games in BASIC and QBasic (yay for free tools!), until I learned Pascal and x86 assembler when I was in high school (when I could use the school's software, and later my own). At university, I studied computer science, and primarily worked in C and C++. Less often, I also used Scheme (virtually the same as LISP), PROLOG, APL, Ada, SQL, FORTRAN, and assembly for SPARC and M68k. Oh yeah, I did a bit of MatLab programming, too.

When I started working (while at university), I used C++, but for one job I actually wrote macros in Lotus 1-2-3 macro language.

When I started full-time at Microsoft (2000), I learned C# (known as COOL at the time) and a bit of JScript (since I was working on the JScript compiler). Most of my career at Microsoft has involved about 50/50 C++ and C#. Once in a while I have to debug VB code, but I never use it for programming.

Once you understand programming, learning new languages is a snap. Except APL -- that is like programming with Egyptian hieroglyphics, and you need a 5-page cheat sheet to know what key combinations map to the stupid symbols it uses instead of keywords. :-P

xD, I think I'm already think I'm past that phase. I'm really fluent in C/C++, and C# (and in Java, too). I can pick up almost any language very quickly, and easily. Heck, even Assembly isn't a problem for me ^_^ But yeah, it's not so much as learning that language. All a language is, is just a tool. A tool is easy to learn, but difficult to master.

It's just that, from the progress I'm making now, and contrasting to some top-notch stuff that is out there today (and yes, I do realize, well, uhh, there's usually a whole studio working on a game), I don't think I'll ever be up to snuff, or even close to what some people are doing these days. It just seems like there's so much disparity. Like, me: | |, them |                                                       |. Yah know?

But, ah, well, I guess that's what it was like for everyone, right? xD, sorry about stressing about that again. But that's just how I feel. I'll get there, someday =]

45/15

Ignoring some copy-paste code done at 13, on some school computer, I really started programming in highschool, at 16.

Pascal was first, but then I quicly took off with VB, Delphi, and C++. Right now I am 22, (to be 23 in July), and I'm using C# whenever I get to choose. I even hijacked the project for my Advanced Graphics course at the university (C++/OpenGL) and converted a few colleagues to use XNA for their projects.

David Hunt:

45/15

 

Yay Zman is not the oldest (I think Machaira has a year or 2 on me too).