I learned to code at 12 in 1986 in 65C02 assembly language. By the time I graduated from college in 1996, I had done hobby programming in assembly in four processors. I didn’t do a single side project from 1996 to present unless it was just to learn a new to me technology for my next job.
During that time, I was a part time fitness instructor as a hobby, I trained for half marathons with friends, dabbled in real estate until around 2009 (guess how that worked out), got remarried, raised two (step) sons and now my wife and I are making plans to live a digital nomad life flying across the US. Our free time will be spent sightseeing and learning Spanish well enough to have a different experience when we stay in Mexico for a few weeks later this year.
I started programming as a hobby in 1986 in 6th grade. By the time I graduated college in 1996, I had been a hobbyist programmer in 4 different assembly languages. I haven’t written a line of code “for fun” since then. The last thing I want to do is open an IDE after work after doing for my job.
I was a part time fitness instructor from around the time I graduated until I was 35, dabbled in real estate for a few years, got (re)married at 35 and raised two (step)children and now my wife and I just started traveling and doing the “digital nomad” thing - staying in hotels and flying mostly to different cities in the US with a few stops in Canada and Mexico.
There are a million of things I would rather do with my free time.
I started programming in 6th grade in assembly on Apple //e in 1986.
By the time o graduated from college in 1996, I programmed as a hobbyist in assembly on four architectures - 65C02, 68K, PPC and x86.
The last time I programmed as a hobbyist was 1996.
For the next 15 years my hobby was teaching fitness classes, running and lifting weights.
I got married in 2012 and became a father to a 9 and 14 year old.
When the youngest graduated in 2020 and a year after Covid lifted, my wife and flew across the US from October 2022 to October 2023 visiting over a dozen cities while I worked remotely,
I started programming in assembly using AppleSoft Basic as a glue language in 1986 as a hobbyist in 6th grade.
By the time I was in college for two years, I found other things I enjoyed much more than programming. From 1994 to the present, coding has become no more than a method to exchange labor for money to support my addiction to food and shelter.
I spent the first decade and a half of my adult life as a fitness instructor and running with friends as a hobby.
My wife and I now travel half the year, “nomadding” flying between cities every three weeks.
I still spend of time after work at the gym of whatever hotel I’m at.
I have been programming as a hobby since the 80s when I was in middle school writing 65C02 assembly, I don’t hate my job, but by the time I graduated in the mid 90s, it became purely a method to maintain my short term addiction to food and shelter and my long term desire not to be old and broke.
Forty-something programmer (diversified into various forms of consulting). Self-taught from printed matter before the Internet existed. Started coding on a ZX81, moved up to Apple ][, then to Macs. Dropped out of college to start working as a coder at 20. I started out as a freelance games programmer but that was a bit beyond my business (not coding) skills of the time, I took a job at a startup(ish) instead.
Nearly all of my learning happened on the job, as a result of taking on projects involving technologies that I had no clue about when I started and mostly mastered by the time I finished. Pretty much what is now called a "full stack" developer as a result.
I missed being a kid prodigy as well. Started programming on C64 in BASIC at age 12. Why I never learned assembly language is beyond me; for what ever reason I don't recall it being on my radar. After high school I went to college for computer science only to drop out after a year and a half and joined the Air Force.
But anyways, eventually the search for getting laid and getting drunk gave way to keeping up with programming. I tinkered around with programming while in the AF but didn't do much.
The itch to program never left though I ignored it for a LONG time.
At 40 I started on a Master's in CS (have a BS in engineering). Graduated at 45. I did remote part time jobs from 45 to 50. Got my first remote full time job at 50 during the middle of Covid in June 2020.
I just switched jobs to a major health care org at 52. It is a Java / Spring Boot / Angular position. I was completely honest with them that I hadn't done Java since MS degree (95% of courses were in Java). Never did any Spring Boot and only did one project with Angular 1.0. And they still hired me.
After a month I kind of felt over my head so I asked my team lead why they hired me. Her answer was people with some experience expected way too much money and/or they weren't willing to learn. She said I was at least willing to learn. I got a 20% boost to what I was making at the job I left, plus amazing benefits so win-win-win for me. I still have a lot to learn; Spring Boot and Angular seems very heavy to me coming from Python / Flask / HTML / CSS / vanilla JS but it is all starting to come together.
Right now my personal interest is Common Lisp. So in the mornings, at night and on weekends I delve into a CL book. It's going slow mainly because I ... SQUIRREL. But whatever, I'm in no big rush.
Moral of story: Continuously learning, be willing to learn, be honest to yourself and employers. Play on your strengths, don't deny your weaknesses and work on them.
We have similar backgrounds in a way. I started coding as a kid too, at age 9. First Basic, then Pascal. Picked up C in my teens. Also tinkered with electronics and was part of an online robotics mailing list that was a lot of fun. It was very hard for me to get parts, living in the middle of nowhere in rural Southern Brazil, but some folks in the mailing list were super cool and shipped me parts from the US. I live in the US now.
I'm a CS major but took electives in embedded systems in college, and those were some of the most enjoyable classes I took. I'm now working on recalling some of that. Ordered some PIC parts and I'm currently taking an edX course on ARM programming.
My only problem right now is, I have no idea how I'd get into that space having a whole career built on server-side software.
1993 - I was born in a dead boring town and was very shy. In this context my dad's computer was utterly awesome.
2001 - After seeing my brother coding in Clipper 5 I wanted to do the same. I didn't have manuals or Internet access (I lived in the 3rd world) so I reverse engineered my brother's code to learn.
2003/2004 - Fell in love with infosec. Low level code for crackers, network protocols, etc. Already had a basic internet connection and I was really happy learning.
2011 - Went to the uni to meet other people like me and finally master all these "hackers stuff" I loved. Uni was underwhelming and time-consuming but got a few good friends and started loving software development.
2016 - After years of being working on side projects and teaching at uni I finally got my first job as developer.
2021 - Not really happy spending my time in meetings and fire fighting production issues. Thinking about what I want to do next.
I did not learn to code from any formal education though. By the time I had my first programming class (at university), I had already been writing code for nearly ten years (Basic, C++ and i386 assembly).
I first programmed a computer in high school Computer Programming 1 class, in Turbo Pascal, running on a 486. But then I stopped programming for many years until I was around 35. I took up the pursuit in earnest and landed a QA engineering job at a hardware company which turned into a software engineering position. I’m doing a majority of Programming in C and C++ currently, as well as Python for writing test scripts.
started at 10 with an Apple IIe, 1978. Now 52 and programming most days. Professionally and also I always have some involved side project I'm pushing forward.
I've been driven by enjoyment of programming, financial need, and, I've been thinking lately, the sense that programming was "my thing" - something no-one told me to do, understood, or even really wanted me to do. Computers were like an alien landing to my hippie/artist parents.
Never took a single programming or CS class, I was interested in various liberal arts type subjects throughout college. I don't know much about computer science, algorithms, etc. But I'm good at what I do and have a solid, stable career working for cutting edge companies.
My dad still doesn't get it, has no interest. Which is annoying but also kind of works for me. Still a teen rebel for being a programmer.
I love getting it done and getting it done right and staying up on the latest. A day where I write good code creates a nice calm feeling I can access as I drift off to sleep. It's been a great career so far and I guess I'll be programming on the day I die. It's fun, why not.
I'm exactly 10 years behind you - started programming computers as a job, i.e. employed, when I was 15 in 1985, and I expect I will be coding until I die. Its the only way I see a future for myself as a developer. That, or learn farming.
I was about 13 years old when I started to code just for fun, on an old 100MHz 386, using QBasic. Before that I watched my friend hack away in BASIC on a C64.
I was in CS-specialized class in middle school, but that was kind of a joke.
I am still doing my BSc in CS at the university.
The first "dollar" (forint) I earned was back in 2011 when I worked as a non-registered PHP developer for a startup here in town then in Budapest during the summer.
After that, I got employed as a full-time Junior Software Engineer at an international company last August. So I've been here for a year, picking up a lot of experience and earning OK.
It is not exactly easy to manage university studies and full-time work, but I can manage.
During that time, I was a part time fitness instructor as a hobby, I trained for half marathons with friends, dabbled in real estate until around 2009 (guess how that worked out), got remarried, raised two (step) sons and now my wife and I are making plans to live a digital nomad life flying across the US. Our free time will be spent sightseeing and learning Spanish well enough to have a different experience when we stay in Mexico for a few weeks later this year.
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