I've often wondered to what extent programming is like learning a musical instrument or another language. That is, you can learn these things when you're older, but in order to truly master them you must start when you're young.
Seems like a pretty apt analogy, programming is a very creative process. When you're a kid you might start off with very simple instruments, toys even. That's akin to me first programming Pirch and mIRC without really thinking about the fact I was programming, I just wanted to make an fserve or whatever. Then I actually started reading about it and learned VB. I don't use those languages anymore just as older and more experienced musicians wouldn't use cheap toy instruments, artists would stop using crayons, etc. But I learned a lot by "playing" in my early teen years.
I think the App Store is helping here by introducing people to a huge variety of applications, thus giving them a huge base from which to come up with app ideas later if they become programmers.
So even if someone starts programming at a later age, experience learned with novel apps at a younger age can be helpful.
Mine was very gradual to the point where I´m not sure how to answer it. I remember from an early age playing with software like Trillian Pro and Frontpage (express maybe too?) and seeing what everything did and watching the HTML change. I didn´t have Internet access very often (I was restricted on when I could dial in on my old Windows 95 and later 98 boxes), so I never hosted anything. But when I was online I started finding JavaScript snippets and starting playing with them and started figuring out what they did to the point where I was starting to do programming that way by the time I was nine or ten.
The first time I specifically felt like I was programming was when friend when I was nine showed me an old QBasic book he had found. He showed me some little programs he had written and that night I spent all night on our old Windows 3.1 computer seeing what I could do with it. I just made little text adventure games and math equation solvers.
Then once I we got DSL around when I was 11 I started to hang on USENET and IRC (older technologies of the time, but they were cool to me) where some folks introduced me to Python.
I began programming when I've got my first computer, an Atari 600XL (what a pos for 1992). I learnt BASIC from a collection of science magazines from the 80s that my older brothers had and from an Atari BASIC manual.
Unfortunately I never had a diskette drive nor some assembler books :(
I was 11 or 12. I learned the really hard way. I was in Norway for a month and I only had an old 486 at my disposal, a hex editor and some Sega Megadrive games and an emulator (the Megadrive uses a Motorola 68000 processor)
I was curious how the games worked so I started hex editing them at random, seeing what would happen if I changed this and that, etc.
Long story short I learned to write programs in 68000 machine code (binary) and recognize patterns in ROMs (music, art, code). I still remember how to code simple things in machine code.
Imagine my joy when I discovered assemblers, and after that, compilers a while later :)
I got my first real computer (a C128D - C64 + C128 in one) when I was 8, with a pile of games on floppy discs. A year later, I was bored of the games and I picked up one of the books that came with it, that was titled something along the lines of "Programming your C64 with BASIC"...
I put 6-10 but it's not like I have 25 years of programming experience, or like it was an early calling.
It's for the hours spent mostly copying BASIC programs from magazines on an Amstrad CPC464. (with very little success rate: these magazine program were not quite working) Then, there's a gap of a few years, before college where I realized that maybe I should go with Computer Science, rather than Mechanical Engineering.
Now, I'm not quite a developer per se (in that I've never had a purely development job and that I'm mostly hacking things together rather than producing production code) but still spend most of my free time thinking about projects and building early proof-of-concepts and prototypes.
At this point, I'm very glad I know some programming but am still wondering if I should go full-on with it and work on it to the point where I can confidently look for a development job...
I didn't own a computer so I'd check out Apple II Basic programming books from the school library and write the "programs" out on a piece of paper. I started doing this roughly in the 3rd grade... seems rather sad now...
My grandpa bought me a TRS-80 when I was 4-5 (don't recall exactly) because "computers are the future." My only cartridges were LOGO and Sokoban so if I wasn't in the mood to push boxes around...
I don't know if you can really call it programming but I'd spend hours writing out huge I/O conversations with the computer that only worked if you knew how it was supposed to go in advance. I found it fascinating.
"Hello, I'm a computer, what's your name?"
"Hello [name], how are you feeling today?"
"I'm glad you're feeling [feeling]!"
etc
And I had the companion radio shack cassette deck that you could use to store programs on. I always had to copy those programs out of the book because I didn't understand them at all.
Sounds similar to my experience. I remember writing a text-based flight simulator on the TRS-80 in BASIC named "F-14" when I was 10 or 11. It was terrible. My takeoff sequence simply incremented your speed, printed it out, and required the user to hit the "stick back" key on the keyboard once you were in the right speed range. The game was basically a text adventure with a few realtime elements thrown in. It also had music which was more like a set of random beeps that sometimes ended up sounding like a melody. Writing about it now makes me want to build it again.
I remember how excited I was when I was able to write data to a floppy from one of my programs. I felt like I could conquer the world.
All I had back then was the BASIC manual, but I was able to learn enough to be dangerous. My first real exposure to probability was the sample code in the manual for a Craps program. Great stuff for a kid to learn!
Looks as if I am completely typical of this group. I started using computers aged 10, but only wrote programs unambiguously of my own making (as opposed to typed in from a book or magazine) at the age of 11.
I honestly don't know. It depends on how you define "started programming." I remember messing around, typing in BASIC programs with my Bally Arcade console back when I was about 9/10 or so, but my interest in that fizzled out for one reason or another, and I didn't get back into programming until I started writing C code in college when I was about 19. I've been programming continuously since then.
I got started with Turtle programming when I was 11 or 12 when my Dad introduced me to it. Had the most fun making a turtle script that wrote "Happy Birthday Dad" for his birthday that year. Fun times!
I don't see why not...the TI-82 had a pretty robust programming language. I programmed a helicopter game on mine back in high school, as well as the obligatory blackjack and poker games.
I had to be 6 or 7 - BASIC, then Assembler, on a Timex Sinclair 1000 - 2K of memory and audio tape storage - moved up to the 2000, then the Coleco Adam, and finally an 8086 I assembled with my father....
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 191 ms ] threadSo even if someone starts programming at a later age, experience learned with novel apps at a younger age can be helpful.
The first time I specifically felt like I was programming was when friend when I was nine showed me an old QBasic book he had found. He showed me some little programs he had written and that night I spent all night on our old Windows 3.1 computer seeing what I could do with it. I just made little text adventure games and math equation solvers.
Then once I we got DSL around when I was 11 I started to hang on USENET and IRC (older technologies of the time, but they were cool to me) where some folks introduced me to Python.
http://geekfeminism.org/2010/07/27/if-you-were-hacking-since...
Unfortunately I never had a diskette drive nor some assembler books :(
Edit: I was 8.
I was curious how the games worked so I started hex editing them at random, seeing what would happen if I changed this and that, etc.
Long story short I learned to write programs in 68000 machine code (binary) and recognize patterns in ROMs (music, art, code). I still remember how to code simple things in machine code.
Imagine my joy when I discovered assemblers, and after that, compilers a while later :)
It's for the hours spent mostly copying BASIC programs from magazines on an Amstrad CPC464. (with very little success rate: these magazine program were not quite working) Then, there's a gap of a few years, before college where I realized that maybe I should go with Computer Science, rather than Mechanical Engineering.
Now, I'm not quite a developer per se (in that I've never had a purely development job and that I'm mostly hacking things together rather than producing production code) but still spend most of my free time thinking about projects and building early proof-of-concepts and prototypes.
At this point, I'm very glad I know some programming but am still wondering if I should go full-on with it and work on it to the point where I can confidently look for a development job...
I don't know if you can really call it programming but I'd spend hours writing out huge I/O conversations with the computer that only worked if you knew how it was supposed to go in advance. I found it fascinating.
"Hello, I'm a computer, what's your name?" "Hello [name], how are you feeling today?" "I'm glad you're feeling [feeling]!" etc
And I had the companion radio shack cassette deck that you could use to store programs on. I always had to copy those programs out of the book because I didn't understand them at all.
I remember how excited I was when I was able to write data to a floppy from one of my programs. I felt like I could conquer the world.
All I had back then was the BASIC manual, but I was able to learn enough to be dangerous. My first real exposure to probability was the sample code in the manual for a Craps program. Great stuff for a kid to learn!