Michael Eaton started a meme with the question: How did you get started in software development?
Yesterday Matt Berseth tagged me in his post, so it’s now my turn to answer the questions and tag other bloggers:
How old were you when you started programming?
Depends on the definition of programming. Keying in stuff into a C=64 from a magazine? Um, 11? Actually writing my own code? 13 I think.
How did you get started in programming?
A friend of mine got a C=64 (see above), and I really wanted one. But a friend of the family was doing development work (I was the same age as his son), and he recommended I get a PC-XT (well, a clone), which my parents paid half of (it was about $1500 NZ at the time – 1989 or so).
As I could still play the games I wanted (Kings Quest etc), I went for it. It was loads of fun – monochrome graphics and all. About the same time, my (alternative hippy) school got a few old CPM machines, complete with 8″ floppy drives and everything, and Turbo Pascal. Some of the older students were learning (from the same parent/teacher) in lunch times, so I tagged along. It was loads of fun, and I learned a lot from both the parent (Grey Nicholls) and the other students (Chris Heath, Darren Brinsden). After that I started to devour books on Pascal….
What was your first language?
Pascal, specificly Turbo Pascal 3.0. I stuck with Borland stuff for ages, too.
What was the first real program you wrote?
Ohhhh. I’ll go with the “whats real” answer. I did a few simple “demo’s” when I was at school – scrolling text and graphics, flashy bars, all that kinda stuff, in x86 assmebler. I did a simple database app about the same time, using a 3rd party TP library for the database. But my first paid-to-write-it app would have been a stock control system for a liquor store in Howick. Damon write the front end till, I wrote the back end stock control part, and they even talked over a 10-Base-2 network, in the days before Windows 3.1 and real network stacks.
It was interesting, and a great learning experience in how to do – and NOT to do – product development. That was in my first year at uni, so I would have been 17 or 18. I still have an interest in point of sale systems from that early project.
What languages have you used since you started programming?
Turbo/Object Pascal and Delphi, C, C++ (minimally), Objective-C (well before the Mac used it), x86, 68000 and VAX assembly, Java, C#, Ruby, and a very very small amount of Basic – VBScript mostly, I never got into the VB6 thing – I was too busy writing native x86 apps in Delphi. JavaScript.
I dont consider shell scripts/batch files to be programming, tho they are really. Same for HTML.
What was your first professional programming gig?
The above mentioned Stock Control System. $10/hour. It paid for most of a years worth of Uni.
If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?
Definitly. Knowing what I know how, I might have focused on some different areas, especially compiler design, and I would have pushed a lot harder to do my final year paper at uni on a topic I gave a damn about (I did it on computer vision, which I couldn’t give a rats arse about, but I did get to code on a nice purple SGI box, which was miles ahead of the 386′s of the time)
If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
Learn as many new languages and frameworks as you can. Game programming is hard and isn’t worth the time, unless you are a math god – dont waste your time, think about other ways to make a LOT more money, because with money you can do the other fun stuff which isn’t about coding – like travel – which can lead to other interesting places to code. Like a beach in Thailand. Or Southern California. Keep it fun.
What’s the most fun you’ve ever had … programming?
Most likely the all-night coding sessions at uni, when we gauged when to leave by when the cleaners came in (5am), not when the sun came up. At 5am, it was time to go home for a shower, come back in for a lecture, hand in the assignment, and go to bed.
I’ve had a lot of fun in things around code – the people, the places – but I can’t think of a specific time I’d consider really “fun” while immersed in a block of code. It’s not un-fun, tho.
If I bend this question a bit, but thing I’ve most enjoyed as a result of programming would be travel. Thru doing this I’ve been to Australia, the US (California, Wisconsin, New York, Boston), St Petersburg in Russia, and Canada, and as a side to doing this (ie, paid for because dev is well paid): all over NZ, Europe, the UK, more of the US etc. It was tiring traveling up to Aliso Viejo (SoCal) every couple of months, but it was fun.
It’s also fun going to school reunions and seeing the “cool kids” at school, who are now not so cool, not doing stuff they want to be doing, while the g33ks are all sorted. Feels quite good.
Biggest disappointment would be missing the first two .COM bubbles. Really should have moved over here (UK) or Silicon Valley then. Oh, well.
Now, let’s tag someone else
First up, I think this is a great meme. Fun writing it, fun reading it. I know who I WANT to tag, but I dont think they Blog. Damon, Richard Vowles and Andy B: consider yourselves tagged. If you want to participate, feel free to send me something over and I’ll post it here. Or not. As you like.
Otherwise:
And: Mark Derricutt.
(if anyone else wants to play, email me :) )
