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A could solder as a teen so being only a guitarist in a garage band that could solder but not afford commercial effects pedals, using books I made my own. This made me useful to companies in So. Cal in the 70s and got on with them first as a junior analog tech then hopped from job to job chasing the money and found myself in CAD/CAM where there was firmware in thar boards. I got to know the coders and it looked like neat discipline. Someone gave me the K&R book and away I went on my own time for fun and profit.
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...to pay for college education parties, cool threads and concert tickets.
While I was working there I learned much more about FORTRAN (which I had initially learned in high school, one of the first five high schools in the country to teach about computers, not just programming - we started with an assembler, sending prepared punch tapes over a teletype to a University in Manchester. When we did FORTRAN we used coding sheets sent in the mail, getting compiler errors or results back a few days later) as I started writing programs for games and also for the Astronomy department.
I was actually studying for a Law degree at the time.
P.S. There was no such thing as an IBM PC at the time. Mainframes (and mini-mainframe computers) were IT!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Got a Radio Shack Color Computer for Christmas. Wrote my first line of BASIC code and I was hooked.
Yeah, I know... BASIC... well you have to start somewhere. 
“The palest ink is better than the best memory.” - Chinese Proverb
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My senior year of high school included a computer science elective. The classroom had eight Tandy TRS-80 computers with cassette drives and monochrome monitors (1981). And I was hooked... 
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Same. Good 'ole Trash-80. Spent many hours poring over computer magazines typing in demo code and saving on those awful cassette tapes and then made my own rocket game. It was simple but cool to me. got me hooked and went to college (NE U.S.) for CS degree. That was over 30 years ago! My how time flies when you're slinging code!
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Beat you, I got an HP33 programmable calculator for Christmas 1979 
Never stopped coding since then.
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We got Commodore 2032 at school - around 1979 - and I started to code a card game. It really worked and sometimes it beat me because it remembered all remaining cards 
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When did I get my HP41, and bought a book about "Synthetic HP41 programming" showing tricks that was really like self-modifying code to get access to functions that were never officially documented and had no public API (as we call it today)?
I believe it was on the HP41 that users were complaining: Why did you drop the factorial function? Of course we know it is available in the math plugin (which was a physical plugin in those days!), but compared to the older computer models, it is slow as molasses! ... To which HP answered: Oh sure, the calculator can do factorials, but we had more important uses for that button, so we couldn't give you access to it ... But through this "synthetic programming" methods, you could get programmatic access to it.
Disclaimer: I might be mixing up HP models here; maybe that wasn't on the HP41 but on another HP model, but with similar synthetic programming capabilities.
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I was working as a mailing machine repair tech and was getting tired of being bounced around on factory floors and getting covered in ink. There had to be a better way to make a living, so with my entire Christmas bonus I bought a Commodore 64, a 1541 disk drive and a 1526 printer. I didn't have enough money for a monitor, so I picked up an old BW TV at a second hand store. The only software I bought was EasyScript. I was going to write the Great American Novel.
I think I got chapter one done of some space opera thing when I discovered Compute! Magazine and VIDEO GAMES. These were the kind you typed in using something called BASIC, which seemed to consist of a bunch of READ, DATA and POKE statements. My favorite was called 'Baghdad' - you had to navigate a faux Islamic city as the green genie on your flying carpet and avoid getting knocked by the white genies the computer threw up. The higher the level, the more white genies to avoid, until the fifth level, when the Purple Genie appeared. He flew higher and faster than you could, and I couldn't get past him no matter what I did.
So, not taking defeat so easily I resolved to cheat. I asked a friend who worked at Naval Avionics and was more familiar with computers than I how to go about this. He suggested disassembly - OK, I said, I have a screwdriver and a soldering iron, now what? No, he explained, you need to disassemble the CODE.
I bought the Commodore 64 Assember/Disassember for $19.95 at my local K-Mart. And proceeded to teach myself 6510 assembler in order to defeat the dreaded Purple Genie. I was successful, and his altitude was reduced.
The rest, as they say, is history ...
Dave H.
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As per my 'bio', started life as a genuine for-real research chemist - and that had computer exposure (IBM w/punch-cards->MassComp->PC). All self taught, except for the a FORTRAN intro for the IBM.
Playing with it was just so comfortable - like darkroom work - time just disappeared as that "OK - just one more try - I got it" took over.
Fast-Forward: Instrument automation. Then Monte-carlo modeling of surface phenomena (nearest neighbor interactions) and even what would now be called fuzzy logic (except done by hand) to use a few datapoints to predict/guide experiments/results. Even caught Marcel-Dekker's attention.
All the forgoing just for the fun of it. Now (actually ca. 25+ yrs), as stated in the 'bio', I do for money what I used to do for pleasure - just like a hooker. Go figure.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I started as self taught, which was good but also awful. I was also very young and with 0 instruments (no Internet, no other people working in IT) so that wasn't half bad.
Then I focused on IT schools, starting from high school (Technical Tigh School, to the horror of my teachers who wanted me to go to a "nobler" high school, which to me means a useless waste of time). I then went on to Computer Engineering.
What got me into it? Curiosity and self-teaching. Where did I learn? From school onwards.
GCS d--(d+) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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I bough at Atari 400 and a cassette player to store my code on (interpreted basic). This was back in the days when complete program listings were printed in magazines. That's the "how" part of my story.
This kind of question cannot be answered with a finite set of responses.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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So is the question not worth asking?
cheers
Chris Maunder
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The question doesn't match the available selections. The question should be "What made you decide to become a programmer?", or "Why did you become a programmer?"
"How did you get into programming?" is a different question.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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When my buddy's dad bought them a IBM PC XT (4.5 Hertz). I was fascinated. Had to go to the library to get books about development.
GW-Basic was the language of choice... 
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I was barely 10 when our school group visited this presentation on computers organized by the city council. I think computers there were Thomson's TO-5 and MO-6 (or the other way around).
Then I got my first computer, a TI99-4A, with its extended-basic cartridge. Started to buy code-related magazines. Later I could get an Amstrad CPC 464, then a 6128 and start using floppy disks. I surely do not miss the times of magnetic tapes.
I started using IBM pc's at school; DOS times, mostly some basic stuff in pascal and prolog. Bought my first pc in 1995; started OOP development in 2003, at first in vb.net, but quickly went to c#.
noop()
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phil.o wrote: my first computer, a TI99-4A,
Me too! I still have it in the box. My parents got it for us for Christmas during the price wars. While my brothers had no other use for it than the console games, I quickly learned how to write little basic programs to solve my algebra homework. A few years later I went to uni and took several programming classes, but dropped out after just two years when the money dried up. Over 10 years later I got the chance to go back and finish...boy had things changed!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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There were no school where you could learn... "that"
Interesting is the option "i created a webpage..." a web...what?
For me, as a child of the early 70's there was no other choice than to see your friend's C64 (when we were 12 or so) and think "i want to KNOW that.. i want to make such a cool game! Imagine! 16 colors! woooosh"
and then buying books about BASIC. and assembler (the next year). then back to basic as assembler was so cruel, no one understands it.
after 2-3 years when the brain had learned and to some degree mastered binary thinking, back to assembler. then it worked.
Then... I think 1987... Turbo Pascal came up. now THAT was a language! No more line numbers. really? FUNCTIONS WITH NAMES? whoooot? omg.
Then... C
of f*** what is this? how do i create that curly ...thing { with my german keyboard? what is Alt-GR ? I really have such a key? Oh yeah.. wow - cooool! { { { } } } all day long
end-of-story. Now into Kotlin. Still curly. Still cool.
whoooooosh!
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I was good in Maths, loved science fiction, and - well before I'd even seen a computer or owned a calculator - I decided to be a programmer. I had no idea what it involved, or how you did it, but I applied for a Maths / Computer Science course at Uni and found out ...
There I discovered that I wasn't as good at Maths as I thought, dumped the Maths part of the degree and switched to "straight" CS. It was a "thick sandwich" course, with 6 months in Uni, 6 months in the real world over four years, and I worked at two government installations before my final placement at a Terminal manufacturer.
After the course, I accepted a junior programmer role at the Terminal manufacturer - stayed there for 10 years rising in ability and job title ...
Never gone back!
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Similar but different - the basic start was always wanting to be a scientist/chemist.
When I was very very young my elder brother got a small chemistry set: used it up in about half an hour . . . I was hooked.
Then, of course, in the movies it was always the scientist who saved the world from the evil alien invaders and monsters. I wanted to be in on that. The rest is in my 'Simpatico' post in this thread.
Thus was it written - thus was it done.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Quote: I was good in Maths, loved science fiction
Me too! But I wanted to be a lawyer. started reading Isaac Asimov when I was 8 years old.
I don't know any more, I just don't.
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A classmate said - "Hey, they got computers here!" ... I never looked back.
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Didn't even have a TV at home when I was a kid. So when I saw a computer for the first time, I was so fascinated by it (12-year-old kid).
Did well in school so had the choice to choose from various professional courses which included Computer Science. Didn't think twice. Haven't looked back since.
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found I was good at it. Then went to school for it.
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