Question, when did you start programming!

[oni-kun]

First time I've created an off-topic thread, so I wanted to know all the details of what languages you started, when, and how you got to become a programmer. (Your certification? Current job?)

 

I saw a few things on youtube when I was very young about how to create some Windows apps and got myself started with VB.NET, The free IDE was great and I had plenty of fun with designing consoles and writing simple but useful applications, but I never really got off anywhere.

 

In later years in my teens a close friend loved PHP, so I bought a web host slot and slowly started whipping out programs and designed my own site, PHP is awesome! I managed to actually be able to write full loops and functions without looking up reference and things.

 

No debugging engines, resources, compiling, lack of portability (.net framework), bleh.. You know

 

I've come to know BASIC, a bit of C++ and Java over the years as well..

 

You?

[roopurt18]

I wanted to be a video game programmer from about age 12 or 13 and bought a C++ book my sophomore year in high school.  My senior year in high school I took a Visual Basic 5 course at the community college as well.  I went to University of California, Santa Cruz as a computer science major.  Eventually I dropped out of UCSC and transferred to California State University, San Marcos where I graduated with a B.S. in computer science and a minor in physics.  After graduating my first job was in PHP / MySQL development and my current position is PHP / PostgreSql / Sql Server.

 

I'm most proficient in PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS Sql Server, JavaScript, HTML, CSS as I use them professionally.

 

I have professional, albeit limited, experience with FoxPro, C, C++, and C#.

 

I've written programs for various purposes in all of the following:  C++, C, Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic 5, C#, Perl, Standard ML, Prolog, MIPS (assembler), HC11, Pascal, FoxPro and probably some I've forgotten.

 

At one time I was moderately familiar with Microsoft's MFC library for creating GUI C++ applications.

 

I've written all sorts of applications as part of my education.  I'd say my three favorite college projects were:

1) The 3D space-shooter game I wrote

2) The mock refrigerator that determines which groceries you need to buy (for my artificial intelligence source)

3) The 4-bit CPU I built on a bread board and then programmed (as part of my physics courses, don't ask me why it was a physics course)

 

I did have to write a simple compiler once; it wasn't my favorite project but it was an enlightening one.

 

I've read many, many books related to programming.  Most of them are related to specific languages, but some are more theoretical or focus on tips and tricks.  One interesting series of books are the "Game Programming Gems" series.

 

I'm sure I left some things out but that's a decent summary of the things I've played with.

[keldorn]

I started off small sometime in 2005, just messing with a local LAMP stack for no particular reason, but what really drives me learn is that I'm more of a entrepreneur. I like to create Startups/websites or whatever the hell you want to call it.  I'm not afraid to handle the responsibilities that come with it, even If I may have to handle way day to create an LLC, I'll figure it out.  I think sometime in 2007 I found Adsense and this whole advertinsg traffic = $ business model that drives the internet really grabbed my focus. There is great potentional here, you have to look no further then the Quantcast list to see the possible amount of millionaires the internet has created. and also if you idea is really good you could be acquired with a huge payoff for your application. So I realized that in order to create a good websites that people will actually use, I will need to learn programming more seriously.

[zq29]

I saw a few things on youtube when I was very young

You must be still quite young then, considering YouTube is only ~4 years old...

 

I started learning HTML around 2000, then the LAMP stack in around 2002/3 I'd imagine, dabbling in a little C++ and Pascal at college in 2003/2004.

[KevinM1]

I started 'programming' when I was a young kid in the early 80's by copying BASIC code I had in a few books and pasting it into my Commodore VIC-20.

 

I didn't start programming for real until I went to college in the late 90's/early 2000's.  It was primarily in C and C++.  Unfortunately, I failed out of the CS program, and graduated with an essentially worthless degree in communication (would you like fries with that?).  I just couldn't wrap my head around the low level binary and assembly stuff.

 

I started learning PHP sometime around 2005 or so.  In the last couple of years I've been teaching myself ASP.NET and C#.

 

Most of my work experience comes from freelancing.  Unfortunately, I hate freelancing.  I have very little patience to deal with clients in a one-on-one setting, as most clients are idiots.  Ideally, I'd get an office job where my interaction with clients would be minimal.  I'm learning the Microsoft technologies for that reason, as most professional dev offices in my area are biased towards .NET, with maybe 35% leaning towards Java.  Unfortunately, my progress has been delayed a bit in the last couple of years due to health problems and other distractions.  I'm getting there, though.

[oni-kun]

Indeed it was the standard  thing for users of those older systems to read codes from a manual, it sounded kinda nice, since even the today's idiot could get something fairly simple done, as they just copy->paste, for batch jobs!..hehe.

 

I love dabbling into BASIC sometimes, Good old ANSI and simple simple syntax.Most of the versions (QBASIC, FreeBASIC) seemed similar enough to get used to them all. But I cannot imagine anyone here using COBOL.....

[ot]Yeah, I'm just just under 18, DOB in April @SemiApocolyptic[/ot]

 

EDIT: Oddly I learned HTML and PHP at the same time, I don't know how I managed to learn HTML fast enough to be sufficient with PHP.

[premiso]

Age 12 when I learned HTML/Javascript. (roughly 12 years ago).

[akitchin]

i learned HTML when i was 14 (1999) and played around with that for a few years, then picked up PHP in 2003 the summer following high school. since then, any work i've done with web programming has been freelance. it was frustrating at first, but once you get a few good, consistent clients, it's not such a nightmare anymore.

 

i still do it part-time (VERY part-time), as i earned a BSc chemistry and am now working in specialty chemicals for oil&gas. it certainly comes in handy, especially for making useful little personal applications here and there.

[ignace]

I started programming back in november 2005 when my dad hooked me up with a project for his company (airtraffic control), however at that time I had limited knowledge of HTML and CSS and PHP had I only heard of by name. I can't remember exactly how I pulled it off (altough the code gives me a good idea) but they were happy with the end result and they still use it till this very day. Since then have I also been telling me I should update the website but I still haven't got around to it.

 

Now 4 years later I have a good understanding of PHP (I know what (int) 'E' and sizeof('hello') outputs), SQL, HTML, JS, CSS, OOP and OOA&D (which I really love). Through high school I learned Java and VB.NET. In college I learned COBOL (yes they still teach that) and ASSEMBLER (yep that to).

 

Currently I am combining work (PHP developer) and college to pay my studies.

[rajivgonsalves]

I started programming around 16 years ago (1993) in school when I was working on some school projects in GWBasic on a 80286

[Zyx]

I started programming exactly 10 years ago (heh... ). My first language was Turbo Pascal. Next year I learnt the basics of HTML, and the next one - I came across PHP and wrote my first scripts. Somewhere at that time I also decided that I'll be studying computer science one day. Two years later I started learning C and C++. Today, my primary languages are PHP, C and Java. I don't like C++ and I try to find some time to learn D.

 

I ocassionally work as a freelancer, but it's a bit boring and frustrating for me. The customers often try to cheat or offer very low money, expecting "professional product" to be done in 3 weeks without designing it etc. I prefer inventing completely new, nontrivial software.

[Adam]

I first started my adventure into HTML about 5 or 6 years ago, while in my final year of school. Started learning it to build a site for a 'Day of Defeat' clan I was in - seems a very long time ago now though. Got interested in PHP about a year or two later.

 

I've been quite fortunate actually. With only college (UK college that is) and personal experience under my belt managed to get myself a junior develop job for a decent company with good opportunities. At the moment just working my way up through the developer "levels".

[keldorn]

The customers often [offer] very low money, expecting "professional product" to be done in 3 weeks without designing it etc. I prefer inventing completely new, nontrivial software.

 

This is why I'm not even seriously considering freelancing, I've seen what people are offering are places like Scriptlance,  That kind of pay doesn't compensate anything for the other hidden costs of being a good programmer, like your social life and your health.

I get people contact me on webmaster forums wanting to do something I know will take maby 8 hours and pay me $5. 

$0.60 an hour anybody, no? I didn't think so. 

Even if you get one thats maby $500 for a 7 day job , and you spend 8 hours a day, that still only $8.92/hour. You may aswell get a job in mcdonalds. lmao

 

 

[KevinM1]

The customers often [offer] very low money, expecting "professional product" to be done in 3 weeks without designing it etc. I prefer inventing completely new, nontrivial software.

 

This is why I'm not even seriously considering freelancing, I've seen what people are offering are places like Scriptlance,  That kind of pay doesn't compensate anything for the other hidden costs of being a good programmer, like your social life and your health.

I get people contact me on webmaster forums wanting to do something I know will take maby 8 hours and pay me $5. 

$0.60 an hour anybody, no? I didn't think so. 

Even if you get one thats maby $500 for a 7 day job , and you spend 8 hours a day, that still only $8.92/hour. You may aswell get a job in mcdonalds. lmao

 

There are three problems with clients, from this freelancer's POV:

 

1. Clients are ignorant.  A lot of clients are either clueless about what it takes to create a website, or think it's still 1999 and think that the majority of the work is in designing and constructing the UI.  Since that's the only part they can understand, as they can see and interact with it on the screen, they don't think that it's much more than making graphics in Photoshop and putting them into HTML.

 

2. Clients are cheap.  Their ignorance detailed in point 1 influences how much they're willing to pay.  It goes beyond getting the most bang for their buck - a lot of them literally want something for nothing because they don't understand the amount of work involved in creating a well designed, secure site.  They just don't get that $10 an hour is laughable.

 

3. Clients are indecisive.  This runs parallel with point 1.  A lot of clients don't really want a website.  They like the idea of having one, but aren't willing to do work on their end to get it done.  Someone, somewhere, told them that a website would increase their revenue, so they search for a developer.  Once they find one, they believe it's up to the developer to come up with everything on their own.  They don't understand that it's a collaborative process, so they don't invest any attention to building their site.  They get frustrated when they learn they're actually going to have to make decisions on what their site should be.  I can't tell you how many times questions like "Are their any sites you like?  Any particular things on those sites you would want?  Anything you want to stay away from?  What about your color preferences?" have been met with increasingly exasperated "I don't know"'s.

 

I've had a couple of clients who were awesome.  Most suck.

[keldorn]

Thats pretty much the problem right there, there too cheap. Custom software is not cheap. Looking at scriptlance I cant belive that there is people there quoting things like 20 days delivery for $1,000. There out of their minds, or the software they will deliver is going to be  garbage, and  if you live in the western countries $1,000 might not pay your rent, and 20 days is pretty much almost a whole month shot to hell for $1,000. You'll be a programmer in poverty.

 

 

[oni-kun]

I've been thinking of freelancing, but not so much in the corporate world, more of referrals or 'for a friend's friend'. My older brother has wanted to start up a T-Shirt company, a local one downtown, who's a better person to turn to than me for a website for promotion? $100 for a template editing and simple session/e-mail developing.

[ignace]

Thats pretty much the problem right there, there too cheap. Custom software is not cheap. Looking at scriptlance I cant belive that there is people there quoting things like 20 days delivery for $1,000. There out of their minds, or the software they will deliver is going to be  garbage, and  if you live in the western countries $1,000 might not pay your rent, and 20 days is pretty much almost a whole month shot to hell for $1,000. You'll be a programmer in poverty.

 

I had that same problem, ignorance everywhere delivering content way too late (for a content-heavy website) and still expecting to deliver on the agreed deadline. That all changed when I started to brief my client of what I expected from them and what they could expect from me on the very first meeting.

 

I also provided them with a full detail report of all work and hours involved in an average project. In this report are contact details included of clients which were willing to answer prospects questions regarding work experience. Some prospects do contact these clients and become excited afterwards to start working with me. After the first meeting I start creating a contract that clearly defines what is expected of both parties. During the second meeting we discuss each point and sign it. From this point on my client is fully informed and knows exactly what I'm working on and what I'm expecting of him soon for being able to continue my work. The contract is a precaution to make sure I still get paid if the client fails to do what is expected of him.

 

A website that has helped me alot is http://www.freelanceswitch.com and is a highly recommended resource for anyone seriously considering freelancing.

[akitchin]

Thats pretty much the problem right there, there too cheap. Custom software is not cheap. Looking at scriptlance I cant belive that there is people there quoting things like 20 days delivery for $1,000. There out of their minds, or the software they will deliver is going to be  garbage, and  if you live in the western countries $1,000 might not pay your rent, and 20 days is pretty much almost a whole month shot to hell for $1,000. You'll be a programmer in poverty.

 

have you considered that they aren't working 8 hours a day on that project during those 20 days? i would habitually give a delivery date based on roughly 15hrs/wk on the project simply because i had several concurrent ones. i agree most clients are cheap, but it entirely depends on the client, and therein lies my earlier point: freelancing becomes viable and arguably enjoyable once you find a few good clients. it may take a while, but you can't cast the entire freelancing market in a bad light because there are some retard clients out there.

 

as for the indecision, it grinds me when a client expects you not only to create a website for them, but generate the content too. it makes me wonder why they wanted a website in the first place if they had no idea what they wanted to say with it.