So How Did You Guys Learn To Dev & Where?

[Sphinxter]

You guys are lucky, when I started there was no internet. My first program was written in BASIC on a Commodore PET.

pffft. I mean really, you could actually program those by typing.

 

[Parkydr]

pffft. I mean really, you could actually program those by typing.

You couldn't type on the PDP-11 I used at uni, it had switches. You set the value you wanted to write, then pressed the store switch.

 

[Klepto]

You guys are lucky, when I started there was no internet. My first program was written in BASIC on a Commodore PET.

pffft. I mean really, you could actually program those by typing.

Uphill, both ways, in the rain, with nothing on my feet except a couple of punched cards tied on with magnetic tape. But seriously, Parkydr has me beat

 

[twojame]

ohh. good question.

Started for me using Amos Pro on the Amiga. Also 3d Construction Kit with Freescape Command Language FCL. More recently experience within a software house (which is not nice), but thats it.

 

[Parkydr]

Parkydr has me beat

It wasn't as bad as it seems, you only had to do that when booting, to set up the execution address. The MACRO 11 assembler code was developed on a mainframe running DEC system 10, typed in via a VT100 terminal.

 

[klikklak]

Never actually learnt it. I was just beginning to dabble in lpc (lpmud's scripting language, modelled on c), but then I moved out of my parents place and was without proper computer for many years. Now in the past few years I've both gone to school and learnt jack shit of various useless languages like vb, asp, flash, java from classes that were too basic and too short. Maybe uni class school will be different. I've picked up latex, docbook and html and recently rudimentary python on my own.

 

[PokeParadox]

I never properly answered the question... my first real look into programming was EPOC on my Psion s3 a!
It's similar to BASIC in many ways,
I then dabbled in calculator BASIC on my TI83+ ^_^
I read a book on c++ but at the time didn't really have access to things needed to actually try anything...
messed around with RPGMaker for a short while...
Then DIV studio,
Then DarkBASICPro...
Then I started uni and actually did some c++!

before anything I hacked about with DOS batch scripts... back when I was running win3.1...

 

[Chip]

I'm not a "dev" by any means, but I have done a bit of programming.

I played around a bit with BASIC on an Apple IIc as a kid, but this was mostly copying example programs out of the manual. I played around quite a bit more with QBASIC on my first PC, and eventually taught myself Visual Basic. I learned Pascal and Delphi in high school, or at least I learned as much as they taught in a high school programming class in the mid 90s, which is not much. Enough to make a couple very basic pacman-esque games and one short text adventure game. I currently use ControlBASIC every day for work, but it is so simplified and specialized that it hardly qualifies as a proper programming language.

 

[mindlord]

Mindlord's odessy of computer-centric learning:
0 - 4 Born into poverty / exposed to computers for the first time in the form of a Timex Sinclair (woo!)
5 Learned to read while studying the TI Extended Color Basic Manual (The TI came from my older brother)
6 Learned fundimentals by copying bits of code from the manual and changing the graphics (Which were in HEX!)
7 - 8 Wrote my first maze game
9 - 10 Touched an NES for the first time and decided "Hey, I can do that!" Wrote a crude Super Mario brothers clone, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles "Double-Dragon like".
11 Got a CoCo 2 (Again from my older brother) and played too many games instead of programming / but I still dabbled with GW basic on my brothers 8086. Basic on the Coco wasn't any good for any real games, but I did manage to write a sprite editor and make a text based adventure engine.
12 Financial upturn in the family - Got a CoCo 3 and wrote a full featured image editing program in Basic
13 - 15 Got a Social life / Got a Tandy 1000HX by mowing lawns and wrote a crude platformer in QuickBasic, along with the associated tools like level editor and sprite editor. The Tandy's sound and graphics chips were GREAT!
16 - 17 Got an i386 PC / Got involved in the Local BBS scene and wrote some Door software for Remote Access, didn't make any money. Losing the Tandy's special chips fizzled my interest in programming since other languages weren't available to me at the time. Picked up a Copy of Slackware Linux and tried to install it on several machines, with some success. Ultimately, went back to DOS (Stupid!) / Became the Lead Singer of a Heavy Metal Garage Band
18 - 21 Got seriously involved with a girl and got mindfu**ed for a couple of years (VERY stupid!). Learned Visual Basic and POV-Ray when I wasn't under the influence of chemicals.
22 - 24 Lost in a chemical haze (Unbelievably stupid!) / played too much Magic: the Gathering / Played too much Playstation / Played too much JVC X-Eye (Yes I actually had one) / Learned VRML and got way too mixed up in Colony City(Cybertown). Got Painter 5 for free with a scanner, and honed my graphical content creation skills.
25 Got involved in HTML/PHP and made a handful of websites for some extra cash, attempted to write a CMS which was too ambitious, but would've been cool... trust me.
26 - 28 Stopped being influenced by chemicals / Slowly picked up C, but didn't really get it. Wrote a crude dice rolling program for the Gameboy Advance
29 - 30 Finally got C and started working on projects for the GP2X. Finished Deathtrap Remix, an homage to my mother's favorite game on the CoCo2 (woot!)
Careful what you ask for. I actually used something like this as a Resume once for a PC support specialist position at a government agency and got the job.

 

[hessiess]

First think of something you want to program, no-matter how ambitious it may seem. Then work out how to implement it. that's what I did anyway.