To fix broken things, on the understanding that different users have different ideas of what is broken.

I am, of course, referring to FOSS here. I can't do anything to help Windows.

When I was about 16 I used to use an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client called mIRC which allowed you write write scripts e.g. in response to "events" or to add custom menu items or dialogs etc. This was really popular at the time and place where I grew up.

My friends and I started off downloading scripts others wrote but at some point I was looking at some of those scripts and what they did and wanted to find out how they worked so first I started looking at that code, then I figured out how to write my own scripts and it just went on from there.

As a sidenote: my current username is from final fantasy 6 (3 on SNES) and normally in the game it was "apokryphos" but because IRC had a nickname limit of 9 characters I had to shorten it to "apokryfos" and I am sticking with it today.

I remember I was playing some game on my mobile phone, which was basically a running game, and it was quite popular for having mods and skins. Out of curiosity, I wanted to learn to make my own custom mods and skin for the game.

It was from there I learned about Unity 3d Game Engine. I discovered that you could create your own games, and man, that was cool! I learned C# and made my own simple games. It was fun to create an actual functional game (though basic) which was much more fun than creating a mod or skin.

Subsequently, I learned that you can do anything with coding. So I did and explored as much coding as possible. Making a website? HTML and CSS. Making an app? React Native. Making a sick animation? Javascript. I have seen people making a fully-fledged game from Vanilla JS online.

As you mentioned, the ability to create 'virtually anything' made me curious to learn more and more about programming.

I was having a vBulletin, I wanted to add some cool features for the forum users, I'd looked for it on the internet and I did not found anything related to it. Then I asked some developer to make it for me and he replied that he does not have time for this. So I decided to write some vBulletin scripts. After that I said to my self, so why I do not write a full forum script instead of using vBulletin. and this was the start.

At a rough time in my childhood, I was plunked down in front of a Commodore PET. I realized that this was something I could control and it would only do what I told it to do. Not only that but I could write a program and suddenly it could do something it didn't know how to do before. The wonder and empowerment that comes from that has never gone away even after something like 45 years!

obviously gaming, Let's say stardew valley

BBS doors. Old text-based games were easy to script and bot.

My story is a weird one.

Many years ago, my uncle got me a coding thing, out of the blue. It was called Bitsbox. It's pretty much simplified JavaScript for kids. My first plan was to make an epic 3D first person open world survival game like Minecraft (remember, I didn't know how hard it was at the time). I started to make it, and got REALLY mad because I didn't even know 1 line of code. Then I made it my life goal to make it. And now, I just think it (coding) is fun (and I don't care about the game anymore).

I first started programming with Flash when I was trying to create more interactive animations using the old ActionScript. At that moment, I realized that programming was a totally open world without borders, and it inspired me to move forward with several projects and dreams of always wanting to create something new, better, and interesting for myself. Programming became a passionate challenge.

When I was a schoolboy, 10 or 11 yo, my parents bought me a ZX-Spectrum. At that time (early 1990s) a computer was still quite an exotic thing (at least in my town). Firstly I just played games with LOAD "". But my model was a bit specific: its keys had not only letters and digits but also strange words like SIN, COS etc. I had no idea what they meant and how to use it. But it happened so that one of my schoolmates also had a ZX-Spectrum (more advanced, handmade by his father). He gave me some advices so I could write simple programs in Basic. Drawing crossing lines which turned into beautiful patterns was cool. And after I studied something new at school I could implement it at home: solve equations, plot function graphs ets. First scrolling string in assembler... It was so interesting and amazing!

I ended up learning how to program because suddenly I had a lot of time (lockdowns) and I was burnt out of customer facing roles (customers can be horrible, bosses can be worse, salary is bad).
Programming was something I was able to learn for free and at my own pace and the salary is better than a minimum wage job.
I think I learned how to program by coincidence. Maybe I would have done it anyway, who knows.

Well for me it was the thing that when I was very young (about 12 or 14) I was allowed to spend no more than 1 hour a day on the computer...

Then I learned that the programmers stays all day on their computers and got paid for this.

So I guess you know how it went, and I also loved it to code. Look at me now spending my whole day on computer and I'm getting paid for this!

Growing up I was the most tech prone in my family. Computers always just made sense to me, and when I get older, it just made the most sense to pursue. I started out with computer engineering, moved to computer science, dropped out, and forgot about things for a while. My wife got pregnant, I was unhappy with my current job, so I taught myself web development. I landed my first job a software engineer dealing with IT management around a year and a half later. After 4 years there, I moved into the corporate financial tech sphere building software in the cloud which is where I am now.

It was on my radar in the beginning because I loved the idea of being able to create the tools & programs I needed and wanted to build. I loved learning about the technical details of how software is built, how brilliant some software engineers truly are, and I know our modern society is built on software. I feel a bit more burned out these days personally, but its more due to other things in life. At its core, programming is so rewarding. I hope to love it again one day.

Laptop inspires to do coding along with such adopting environment

Old guy here (72). I recall reading a book about students using a computer in 7th grade. I was a math major at the time, but in 1967, my high school got a Monrobot computer with a magnetic drum memory, and in 1968, my high school got a conventional IBM 1130 mini-computer and on Saturdays we went an IBM data center to get time on one of the low end IBM 360s. I independently went to a CDC data center, got to spend some time with a CDC 3150, and got to see a CDC 6600 in action. I got my first job in 1973, fairly advanced for that time, a multi-computer multi-tasking database server using HP 2100s. Image of 4 of the 8 computers one side of the room.

computer room

What you realized is called 'art'. With all of it's restrictions, programming is a form of art. If you can't do something with a language, you can create one! it's endless... Regardless, our eyes are not endless :) I'm in comp sci not to impress but to contribute and just learn.

Unironically the Discord community, and I am grateful for it.
I was building discord bots for fun now I have 5+ years experience in full stack development with a good income.

When I was younger, I remember a Code.org representative came into my class. I made a couple games on their with blocky and had a lot of fun. Now I'm hoping to become a video game programmer! :]

cause i want to make another people happy and help them

i create a simple website for small company and simple landing page in some event for free, i can make them happy and also help their company grow or i can just make portfolio website for my friend

Back in 10th grade, I had this vision that Computers were the coolest thing ( Games I mean ) after I got my first PC. I accidentally stumbled upon some of the Khan Academy's Nature of Code Videos. I loved the notion of making a computer do what we want it to do. For the first time, I felt amazed that I could be so powerful as well that I could tell a computer to do what I wanted.

I feel powerful when I think I just need a laptop. The possibilities are limitless, the only thing that will ever limit is, the WILL. But holding the power of building something excites the most.

I was dissatisfied with the situation in which we were forced to use software for our work that was simply bad. So I started learning to program and replaced them.

For me, getting into programming wasn't driven by inspiration. Instead, I'd describe it as a deep-seated determination to delve into programming, regardless of the potential consequences. It's hard to articulate, but it felt like a strong sense of purpose sending me forward😃

I wanted to make a shooter game with a great story

What inspired me? long story short: I liked it. And, I was really... I was alive. Also, not to mention some games that used mechanism requiring logic (code) to run or to do a certain task, like, Imaging having the ability to program a thing that serves a purpose in your own unique way. That's it, I can create whatever I want whenever I want, anything that sticks to my mind.

During my higher secondary education, I was introduced to coding in C++ as part of the curriculum. Initially, I found it uninteresting as I couldn't see its practical relevance at the time. However, everything changed during my undergraduate studies in electronics engineering when I undertook an embedded engineering project that required the use of C++. I programmed a micro controller to make an LED light blink based on my code, and seeing the changes in the physical world due to my code caused passion for coding.

I have to thank Cheat Engine for exposing me to some basic concepts. I played a lot of games online as a kid and loved to watch videos on how to use Cheat Engine to give myself unlimited HP or whatever. It was all single player stuff on the web so I don't think it hurt anybody.

That was when I realised you can do so much with a little bit of code.

I grew up just as Atari and Intellivision and other home gaming options started to come out. My parents would not get me one. But they did get me a Sinclair ZX81. So I started making my own (very simple) games instead.

I was good at it in high school due to a proficiency at solving logic puzzles, and I liked to fix things. However, I never intended to make a career out of it; it was a mental exercise akin to a mathematical proof or a crossword. When I grew uninterested in my major in grad school, I was looking for an easy change and happened to be in a geographic location that needed programmers.

I was the right age -- 14 or so -- when the first home computers became available around 1980. I had a ZX-81 and a Spectrum, and I always found programming them much more fun than playing games.

But even before that, back in the 1970s when there wasn't much children's TV on, my sister and I would watch Open University programs -- because they sometimes had cool animations on the science and maths courses. I noticed that the guy running the computers for these, sitting at the back of the studio, usually had long hair, a beard and wore frayed jeans rather than a suit -- but everyone treated him with awe and respect, like he was some kind of latter-day wizard. So I thought, that's the job for me! Now 40 years into my career I do indeed have long hair and a beard, and have never worn a suit to work in my life...

It was the 90's. I was on my dad's dialup connection. I played online chess and Neopets, and wanted to find others to chat & play with. So I created my own site with secrets. It never did launch fully, but writing some basic HTML / CSS / Javascript, then moving to Flash and building a small 2d MMORPG prototype gave me the same realization: that I could basically build a world different from the reality I was in, and connect with strangers across the world.

The same reasons still drive me to program today.

3 Things:

1.) what my friend was able to do with the C64. mostly listings in magazines... my Amiga lacked good manuals, but it was quite interessting

2.) our electronics teacher build a modular board with us to control LED's, Relais and stuff + a centronics Interface. Control that by programming the PC was rewarding (there was a similar thing available from german fischer technic for the C64... )

3.) in my studies there where rumours that we need to learn pascal (OK they switched to C/C++), so I bought a book, get a copy of Borland pascal and started coding.

To be honest, I have no clue. I'm pretty sure it all started during lockdown. I was bored on Discord one day playing with a Discord bot and I guess I just wondered that it would be pretty cool to learn how to program XD

it's the allure of problem-solving and the intellectual challenge that programming presents. The ability to break down complex problems into smaller, manageable pieces and then solve them using logic and creativity is incredibly satisfying.

I loved playing games when i was young, i started reading chip and digit magazines and loved new gadgets and software's that eased my life, later on i started delving deeper into various hardware parts and understood in detail their working and importance and how software's depended upon hardware, back then games that were pirated came with cracks which in itself was complex for kids to apply and make the game run, i started learning as how cracks were made and how they worked, after that i had a deep urge to create games as per my wish but i found out that i needed deeper understanding of how to code, therefore i chose software as a field of interest. Today i work as a full time Android app developer, and as a hobby i work with unreal engine 5 to create different worlds and characters. In short Gaming had a huge impact on my life, people may consider games as bad but i feel if channeled properly can awaken a Childs interest in the field of software.

During my childhood, I always had the curiosity on how things like those cassette ROM games, keypad mobile games & apps, etc. worked. I still remember how excited I was when I played the snake game on my dad's first keypad phone.

Then, in my school we had a programming course which taught ancient Turbo C++. For a complete beginner, it was very difficult to understand many things related to programming (including data structures like linked lists, circular queues) and the significance of these programs at that time (since the compiler was ancient).

First year, I struggled and somehow just passed the exams. Second year, I struggled even more when data structures were introduced. My teachers and other classmates helped me with the concepts. Then, we had to make a project at the end of the year based on what we had learnt. Everyone in my class had teamed up with other people and there was no one left to team up with me. I was on my own (like destiny wanted this to happen). I lacked confidence but I somehow needed to pass the course, it was highly critical that I pass. I started to code and implemented a pharmacy store system within a week all on my own and it worked pretty well. That one week I enjoyed programming so much that I wanted to code more. I decided to pursue Computer Engineering in college and know more about computers.

I still use C++ today, but the modern C++ (it's mostly self-taught though). Although after getting into the industry, I have lost that motivation to code, I don't code outside my work hours these days :-(

I wanted to duplicate a website for my purposes, which I did by pressing CTRL + S. What stood out for me was how easy it was to make a webpage, so I decided to make one for myself. Who knew I would discover a whole career in this.

For me, i just wanted to make something fun.

My first exposure to Programming was in school, when I started learning C++. However, I found it really tough at first but what I did not realize was that this was because I had other very heavy subjects.

Fast-forward to engineering I chose Electrical as my field. But I bought a Herbert Schildt book and started programming in my free time. Slowly but surely I got hooked on it. Later on, I did my MS in Computer Science.

By today, I have experience in programming embedded systems, computer vision, GUIs, IoT, applications, Machine Learning and whatnot.

March 14th, 1980.

I'm 11, at school, in the last lesson of the week, and it's Maths. What kind of psycho schedules Maths last thing on a Friday afternoon? The class is in 'the slump'. No-one wants to be here, and there's barely enough energy in the room for even the unruliest kids to turn it into misbehaviour. I'm just hoping to make it through the next 45 minutes without being called-upon to multiply an improper fraction (the subject of the previous lesson the day before).

Mr. Golding, our Maths teacher, breezes in. He's alright - not the strictest, shoutiest, or meanest teacher we first-years have encountered, but he takes no shit and actually seems to enjoy teaching, which makes his lessons if not fun then at least tolerable.

An assistant follows him in. He's pushing a TV trolley, but instead of a telly and a video, this trolley has something different sat on top. Something we have never seen before. A couple of us know what it is, because we're the electronics nerds who read Practical Wireless, Electronics Today, and Elektor, and build toy devices using LEDs and 555 timers. We eye it with mild interest, because after all you don't see an actual computer every day.

Mr. Golding plugs it in and turns it on. It's a Commodore PET 4032. It chirps musically, then sits there doing nothing.

### COMMODORE BASIC ###

 31743 BYTES FREE

READY.

It transpires that Mr. Golding has a fractions tutorial program on disk, which he loads up and then we spend the lesson playing with it. It's interesting because it's on the computer, but it's still Maths, so, y'know, is it hometime yet?

But then, unexpectedly, this happens.

?DIVISION BY ZERO ERROR AT LINE 165
READY.

Mr. GoldIng then proceeds to LIST the program, fix the bug with an IF...THEN guard test, adds a PRINT statement warning against entering zero as a divisor, and the program behaves differently this time - not crashing when given a zero and instead displaying a message about it.

And the little train chugging calmly along the path of my innocent young life jumps the rails, and I knew then, at that exact moment, that I was going to spend my life telling computers what to do.

And I have.

I just put my first question into stackoverflow and got it answered and I am excited about that. I have been an IT professional for 50 years this year. I started coding in Fortran II in 1968. What excited me then, and continues to this day, is to have an algorithmic problem and then solve it using code I created. After far too many years in management, I work now as a volunteer in a museum-archive, developing a cataloguing database and managing the website. Who knew you could be full stack, finally, at age 73?

And I can teach a 7 year old, who has never seen code, to build a Pong game in 2 hours flat. Now, that is fun!

The anger about losing money playing slot machines.

I was 19 and a bit stupid, and I was gambling away a third of my salary.

Interestingly, it was not the gambling itself I was addicted to, but the gaming experience of stacking fruits in boxes.

Decided to use Macromedia Flash to create a copy of the game so that I can play it for free. 20 years later, I still open it up from time to time, give it a spin and smack my keyboard, fuming about fruits and random generator's personal bias aimed against me.

I was in 7^th grade when our school system introduced  “new math,”  a curriculum innovation(?) motivated by the Soviets launching Sputnik a few years earlier. The school district had sent our math teacher (quite young himself) to learn these “new methods” the previous summer. One of the first non-traditional elements we learned was number bases other than 10, which, of course, included 2, which, we were informed, was how computers did arithmetic. None of us, probably including our teacher, had ever seen one in real life.

I decided I could build a machine that added two numbers using switches. My father generously took me to Allied Electronics to buy a lot of multipole switches, a couple spools of wire, and a soldering iron. I sorta, kinda, succeeded, mostly by trial and error. My teacher and I got our picture in our small-town weekly paper. I only wish he’d understood enough to tell me, after I’d finished, that there was something called “Boolean algebra” I could learn from books.

So the story pauses there, until the spring of my senior year in high school, when a friend of my father’s offered to take me to the factory where he worked and teach me to program their computer. On a Saturday, we went in, he gave me McCracken’s book on Fortran, and, together, we wrote a small program (don’t remember what it did), keypunched it, and got it to work after several attempts. I was hooked.

In the fall of 1967, I started college at what I believe was the only school on earth at that time where unlimited computer time was available to every student who could find an empty terminal (model 33 teletypes) connected to the time-sharing system. A nice lady working in the computer center gave me (I’m pretty sure, but not positive it was free) a BASIC manual, I sat down, and started to program. I still have that manual.          

The genius who invented BASIC, Professor Kemeny, later president of the college, believed that the computer was as essential to a liberal arts education as the library. He had created BASIC with the intent that anyone could learn to do interesting things in a short time. John McCarthy (AI pioneer) had suggested that they also build a time-sharing system. Prof Kemeny hired undergraduates to create the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System. On May 1, 1964 (I was a freshman in high school a thousand miles away) they achieved proof-of-concept, and by June, eleven or so people could use the computer at the same time.                                                          

Lucky for me, Dartmouth still didn’t have professional programmers when I arrived, so I got to join the DTSS system staff as an apprentice. It was my work-study job, no course credit, but an absolutely priceless education.

A video made for the 50^th anniversary of BASIC, called “The Birth of BASIC” is on youtube. It is, I believe, also the story of a very important part of the history of the modern computer world.

To make small programs I imagined when I was like 4, when I had an XP Laptop

My is a more uncommon story. While in high school, in the late 2000s, I took a two-semester intro course to Java. I found it interesting, but then I went to do other stuff that I found interesting at the moment. Later on, while in college, I was majoring in Linguistics. I became so fascinated by languages and then I found out about Computational Linguistics and NLP. I also wanted to work on Human Languages Preservation, but then I realized that could cover more ground with coding skills. So I decide to also major in Computer Science. It was definitely a great decision.

I start coding when I was 22 when I did a course of graphic design and teacher told to do programing as mine designed was ok but the program logic was better. I am 42 now, still learning and trying to keep up with new updates.

I started a PhD, LOL. But in all seriousness, I looked on in wonder when my brothers were typing lines and lines of code into their XZ81 and they got to play a game, back when that was unheard of in semi-rural Northern Ireland. I learned how to do a little bit of HTML in the late 90s from a friend and then did a humanities degree in which my only skills on a computer that were needed were word processing. When I went back to education to do my PhD in human geography and suddenly had a tonne of quant data to analyse I wanted to use something I could reproduce easily and so could others that did not have access to and SPSS licence. So I started learning R. Yikes. I still don't know what a lot of the coding means, or does, but I eventually got about three quarters of my thesis figures to be beautifully created in R.

Playing games and then being inspired to make my own.

I was 16, and some school friends were making a model rocket (sponsored by the French government, which was providing the engine). Ok, it was in 1973, and it was quite an exciting project.

As a math geek, I was asked to make some simulations. Because the equa. diff. are difficult to handle (the mass changes as the propergol is consumed, and the air resistance becomes highly no linear around mach 1), we turned to computer simulations.

Fortunately, the father of some team members did work at CERN (yes, the birthplace of the Internet, some 16 years later), and we were able to negotiate a few milliseconds of computer time per week on the brand new CDC 7600. (Yes, during that time, a computer was the size of a building.).

So I wrote some FORTRAN lines on punch cards, which I handed to the guy over the window on Wednesday, for a result on Friday printed on perforated continuous form paper (another antiquity). Note that this rhythm was the same for everybody; my only favor was to be freed from paying (normal users were paying by elapsed milliseconds).

The development took about 7 months, and the final run took a few tens of milliseconds. Today, I can write the same program in 15 minutes in, say, Julia or Python, and run it in nanoseconds, on my own PC, to get a nice 3D graph to be shared in a browser. In facts, I would not even write the code, but look for it on GitHub.

My story has started when I was a teenager and my sister's ex-husband from USA has arrived into Lithuania and brought with himself a portable laptop. I don't remember now what was it's model, but I do remember that it certainly captured my attention because it was a first computer I saw in my life, so I have asked him to "explore" his computer. When he agreed, after a couple of my keystrokes he had to re-install operating system. Nether-less, I didn't like "sysadmin role" :-) But that was a profound experience.

Then, later in life in my first adulthood steps I went to study Physics for bachelor in VPU (now extinct) university. There was a class with computers running DOS operating system. University had Derive CAS licenses, so I noticed that I like to mangle various math code in Derive system in that class. So I have spent much my free hours in this class bashing Derive formulas (some meaningful, some - not).

Later my parents have bought me 80486 computer. I've started to learn Turbo Pascal programming language in university and in spare time I was developing some numerical evaluation of Physics formulas. First formula which I was coding into Pascal based program was barometric pressure formula. Like you had to input height above sea level, temperature and other factors and then program emitted calculated pressure in Pa units. Nothing extraordinary, but this process has captured my mind AND because I'm a big introvert and was not very successful with attracting girls attention- it was a good escape method from "sad life aspects".

Later some Physics professor has noted my these abilities and have asked to build a CD - collection of Pascal programs which imitates Physics experiments and/or explains visually some Physical concept. I have built many of such Pascal programs. Don't remember now (I'm 46 years old now) what their each goal was, but one specific case I do remember. In one of mine programs you had to input lens type (convex, concave, etc) and then program graphically was showing how light rays are focused or de-focused going through that type of lens. Probably I was using turtle graphics for implementing this stuff on DOS windows sub-system. Professor was very happy to get my this CD full of physics programs, so I've got a good exam degree, but it's a bit sad that I did not made that CD copies for recalling my pascal experience interesting from historical perspective. That would be also interesting stuff to put on my resume. Nor I don't know how professor have used my this creative work.

Never mind, that's how my big journey into programming has started.

I started out as a hardware tech (scopes and logic analyzers with through hole ttl logic ). In the enginering department where I worked there were people banging away on vt-100 terminals writing what I was told was C. In the got a library there was the K&R book "The C programming laguage". I had a taste of assembler on a z-80 microprocessor and some basic from a Ti 994A "home computer", so the concepts were fairly familiar. I got a surplus DEC PDP 11/23 with a C compiler and never looked back.

I'm pretty much a hack and old as the hills now, but am useful to a good many people with my hardware and software skills. It's very addicting and I'm obsessive about it.

This might age me a bit, but I started programming as a young child circa 1984 on a Commodore PET 64 because that was the only way to make it do anything.

Ours didn't have storage of any kind outside of the onboard RAM. When you turned it on, you just got a simple Commodore BASIC prompt, ready for you to teach the machine what you wanted it to do. When you were done, you turned the machine off and BLINK, all your work was gone forever. You had to start over from scratch when you next turned it on again. My dad bought magazines and books that came with snippets of code for little games and mundane tasks, which I studiously entered to watch what each one did.

As soon as I realized what the commands were doing, I started tweaking them to see what else they could do and that was what hooked me. It was like exploring a forbidden realm, somewhere no one (I knew) had ever visited before. Later, on an IBM clone, a series of small books that had readers entering and running code to participate in the story took my curiosity to the next level: "Micro Adventure". My imagination was captivated and I've never lost that sense of wonderment.

Well the same thing happened to me, also after that I thought of making my own operating system (that was the peak).

Exponential growth inspired me to start programing.

Maths classes, and wanting to do things the "easy" way. Learning formula's is easy enough, remembering them is not my forte.

~2001 / 2002 I had a programmable graphics calculator for school, and the instructions included information in how to program it. So I went through the excercises, learned how to program with it and when I learned formula's for math's problems, I'd create programs that used input to fill in the variables of the formula and find the answer for me.

I think is just moeny.yes.I konw many people may say I have interest,but making money is my intrest.

I always wondered how things actually worked, and I used to look at the html just for fun to try to see how it worked. I even inspected the code sometimes, and changed things, always fascinated when the things changed back after I reloaded the page. Now I code Python, Java, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and SQL, so it makes a slight bit more sense :).

I recall hearing about this new thing call a microprocessor and it as now possible to make a computer so small you could have one at home. So I made one. To find out what I could do with 128 bytes of RAM I had to learn 6800 machine code. So I soon learnt from 86 02 8B 02 3F that 2 + 2 = 4.

mine was quite mundane: i was about to graduate from a maths and physics degree - but didn't know what to do next (i loved maths but wasn't good enough to become a research mathematician, and i wasn't enamoured with physics at that stage) - i should explain this was in 1967!

our physics dept. had obtained a computer for their experimental work, and put on a short course in fortran - i went to this - the first time i came across computers!! (on a science degree??!!) - and really enjoyed writing little programs in fortran (i still have my very first one sitting on my shelf - yes it's on punched cards), and the rest is history.

Actually this is reading more like a history anecdote than a tech one, ha ha!
and makes realise how very much tech and computing have changed over the last 55 years or so, every time i tell it.

1980 Sophomore year, Woodshop. My shop teacher says "Computers, that's where the money is".

Signed up for a programming class as soon as I could. 38 years later I'm finally getting the hang of it.

I got inspired by seeing a terminal prompt in my native language, after accidentally running into the computer lab in a new school when I was looking for my class.

It was a weird and sudden realization that the games and apps I was using on my computer weren't just made by some superhuman scientists on the other side of the world, but it can be done anywhere, just like here in the lab, by my peers.

In school I made a game with C++ graphic libs and all in Turbo C++. Horrible dev experience but made me addicted because of the freedom to do anything you want.

Still in love with it because I love solving problems and learning new stuff.

In 1966 my high school math teacher arranged for a "portable" computer (340 lb) from Univac Corp to spend a half year in the classroom. His challenge was: any student who passed the trigonometry and geometry exams by mid-term could learn about computer programming for the rest of the school year. It had an 8-bit "word" and a whopping 4K words of core memory. Programming was via punching machine code on a paper tape and results were in a bank of lights on the front panel. In January 1967 I added two numbers, displayed the result, and was hooked for life. I still write js-html-php apps at 75 years old.

I was inspired to start programming by my fascination with technology and how it empowers us to create innovative solutions to complex problems. The ability to bring ideas to life through code and see the impact it can have on the world is incredibly rewarding. Additionally, the endless possibilities for learning and growth in the field of programming continue to motivate me every day.

My intro to programming was the opposite of inspiring! FORTRAN 66 on an ICL 1900 mainframe at the University of Sussex in 1969. The old adage was that a compiler turns input into error codes. My undergrad project was to program The Sieve of Eratosthenes prime number finder - it took a month to get the the program to work. My next foray was a Sinclair ZX81 that had a built-in BASIC compiler which I used for statistical calculations. It actually worked quite well and made me into a Zilog CPU fan! Nowadays, I use Python and Pascal for solving recreational maths problems. For example, algorithms for calculating the value of pi (which I revisit every March 14th).

What inspired me to program was moving from a manual fabrication job to the office and finding so many poorly implemented processes that I had to find a better way. It all started with excel vba and when I inevitably hit the wall of what excel was capable of handing, I downloaded visual studo and sql server. I started developing solutions for other employees in the company and now we run my software to manage all out projects.

The first time I ever realised that 'normal people' could program computers was one Christmas as a child when my dad wrote a simple program on our home PC which provided clues as to where the presents had been hidden. I'm not sure I really understood what I was seeing at that age, but I was very impressed, and it gave me a fascination with - and sense of curiosity about - the kinds of things you could use computers for.

It wasn't until I was in my early teens and started dabbling with web development and, later IRC bots that I really realised that I could make computers do stuff for fun, mischief, and creativity, that I really started to think about programming as a 'thing'.

finding the perfect programming language that does everything for me.

I started with C++, then went over to Java. Now I am on python for a very long time :-)

There was a lot of excitement about computers in 1984. I took my first programming class in BASIC. I was hooked. Fortunately, I had a great instructor that made everything fun.

I always found it very interesting how things where built up, even from the moment we got a first computer at home when I was around 12years. The computer we bought was installed by myself together with an experienced family member, the next couple of computers where all built by myself.

I started researching and investigating how websites where built out of curiosity, followed a lot of tutorials. I even started to develop my own projects like a text based MMORPG as an hobby when I was about 16years. Currently still programming and keep building up skills. Programming is definitely exciting since the range of features and possibilities is growing exponentially.

Good question and thinking about this a lot, but in the end it all comes down to "moving pixels" ^^

Experiencing Pong for the first time, having a C16 and Amiga 500 later, watching especially Demos (big demoscene fan back then) intrigued me to figure out "how".

The "how" turned into copy&paste and later into "what else", which lead to me trying things. And with the first own creation more motivation followed and the cycle of creating to experience started :) In the end, I am a lousy graphical programmer ... ^^'

Today, I am more looking at the least common denominator: what may help? Not thinking too much about pixels but about functionality, progress and kaizen. But without the initial "chasing pixels" I don't think I would be where I am now, trying to understand to prevail.

Thanks for the question. Brings back memories ;)

As I am not a programmer, but an electrical engineer. Programming in itself is more or less one of the tools in my shed. I became an engineer partly due to Gyro Gearloose ("Daniel Düsentrieb" in German) and a practical course at school I attended where we visited the nearby university of applied sciences and built autonomously driving toy cars. By the end of the year we performed at a competition against other local schools and universities. That thrived me that I wanted to dive as deep as I can into the topics - so basically curiosity.

The main goal was to solve real-world problem and stay happy especially my contribution is of helpful. Happy coding everyone!

When I was 18, I started out with coding, and the thing that fascinated me the most was that I could build and also see the changes directly on my screen without any extra cost, and if you failed, you could always restart.

Then i started showing that to my seniors and got recognized. I , asked to take workshops and host events, and now i am getting invited to judge .

Somewhere, I got a job to support my family, and these recognitions inspired me to start.

and what inspire me to continue? I feel like I have a lot to learn about how large systems are built and how systems are scaled. also the feeling that I made something which helps people and they use it

Out of the blue, I just felt this urge to dive into computer science. It was like, I didn't even know where to start, but I knew I had to start somewhere. See, I come from a long line of truck drivers, and I wanted to challenge myself to put my brain to work in a different way, beyond just driving a semi-truck. So, I started messing around with Termux, and then recently, I've been getting into Python. It's been a slow process, though. I mean, I'm 45, and have very little to no background in this field except for what I've been picking up over the last few years. But whenever I hit a snag, I just look things up and try to figure them out using reasoning and logic. There's so much to be learned that can make it seem overwhelming. That's why I try taking the scientific approach to it all, and really trying to really understand things in a deep and meaningful way.

To be honest, I did not know the programming world existed until I started my career. My family never had enough money to give me a computer/tablet/smartphone. So I decided to study Computer Engineering because it was my hometown's only available Engineering career. I knew I wanted to study (any) Engineering because I loved maths and I think I'm good at using it to resolve problems. Eventually, I began to discover programming semester by semester, year by year and now I can't imagine doing other stuff.

What or who? I usually find "who" more interesting. Are you willing to share?

To understand how the things works

I think it should be a sense of technology. In this era of constantly improving technology, any technology cannot do without coding, and it constantly attracts me.

I was the same, my first program at school was in basic, a multiplayer tank game where two tanks drive around and shoot at each other. then there was visual basic where we did heaps of forms which was surprisingly interesting with all the stuff behind the scenes of an interface. when I found out you could build apps for iphone for free later in life the interest sparked up again until I lost confidence in Apple. Now I use PHP building web apps and pages. also really handy as a musician who can't remember any theory to save his life, I have many scripts and apps to help me along, including a drummer and bass player i programmed that i jam along with all the time. with all the free ways to code, the world is your oyztar!

Looked at my friends absolutely annihilating their keyboards programming some really advanced stuff. Then decided I would absolutely love to destroy my keyboard to write some illogical programs!

I used to play video games on various consoles when I was 4 years old. Everything about the system mesmerized me, the complexity of the graphical user interface (GUI), the speed, the memory, and the size. I wanted to make things like those; I wanted to be free to make whatever I wanted where the only limit was my own mind, and I wanted to overcome challenges.

My mother told me it was boring job and that I would type at computers all day. After quite a while of her saying that, I gave up on it.

Many years later, when I was working on designing 3d models for a 3d printer, I saw part of the software that enabled me to program the 3d models to move, change color, et cetera. I played around with it, and I enjoyed it. This re-sparked my interest in programming.

While I was browsing the "profile" section of Khan Academy, I saw something labeled "Projects". I clicked on it, and realized it was a programming environment. I started studying it and had much trouble, until I saw a hyperlink to Khan Academy’s programming courses. I started learning to program in JavaScript.

I’ve been programming ever since.

Also, why the unrelated tags?

I learn how to coding in basic level in pinescript v5 because I need it to creat my own strategies. It was first time when I interact with coding word and I never read an User Manual before to start instead I prefer to watch videos on Youtube or shuffle on internet if I get stuck in any point of my project. I am in this "world", and I love it, because I am looking for financial freedom otherwise for me is waste of time when we have a lot of fun outside of house with our family or friends. I noticed that this "world" is a little bit toxic for family or social life, at least in my case but when I will finish my single goal I will break down the relationship with this "world". So guy be aware how much time you spent in from of your machines because you will never take it back later on. DYOR

I started programming when I was 11 or 12, on an Apple IIe. I don’t exactly remember how I got started. I think it just looked interesting. I ended making The Grading Machine, a program to keep track of my grades. It was exciting figuring out how to write to a file.

I started, because I wanted figure out how things work... back then as kid in the 80s.

That's a really good question. It made me remember the old days. Well, it was about 3 years ago (not too sure :P) but the journey seems long when I see how good I got at programming when back then I didn't even know how to output something on the terminal.

When COVID started, I was stuck in my bedroom for a good amount of time and somehow I found myself watching anime and movies, reading manga and light novels, ...
One day, I thought about saving everything I watch or read, making a list where I could access all the information of a specific item (whatever I saved) and also add my own comments of how I felt after each ending. I first searched online for something that could do all of this but I couldn't find something that had all the features I wanted. From that day on, I thought to myself that I should make my own app. My first project was a "Calculator" with Windows Forms since I wanted to learn C++ and C#. After that, I dedicated more than 6 months learning C++ and C# and finally achieving my goal to create the app I always wanted (Honestly, before choosing these languages I searched "Fastest programming language" haha).

Realizing how programming allows me to create virtually everything I want, I fell in love with it! Truly the best thing that has ever happened in my life.

My inspiration to program was in the K-Drama 'Start-Up.' No kidding. I just thought that, if that guy can create something super cool, why can't I?

I always like to make things and see it working is a great things... but I did not accounted the bugs along the way..

The moment that first captured me (as a child) was playing around with a BASIC program I laboriously typed in from the Amstrad CPC-464 Manual.

I can't remember what the program did, but I remember the feeling of being able to make this machine behave exactly the way I wanted it to, in advance. Sort of like I was a puppeteer or a ventriloqist, but more indirect. More magical.

39 years ago I got a ZX Spectrum for my birthday and Basic was very appealing to me. Never stopped ever since.

My passion for creating video games led me to discover the world of programming. I found that my interest extended beyond game development to encompass software engineering. This realization prompted me to delve into learning programming, despite not having a degree yet. I am currently dedicated to growing and expanding my skills in this dynamic field.

I was exploring my skills and thoughts when I thought about coding. I wanted a to try something new so I started.

i realized at a very early age that computers, unlike people, will do exactly what you want if you ask properly...

i started programming in 1972 (HP2000 Time-Shared BASIC) and still do it for a living (not in BASIC).

sometime in the late 90s I encountered online the person who in 1980 decommissioned & scrapped the HP2000 that our school system used, because the Apple II had obsoleted it.

he gave me a copy of the last system backup, which had been taken immediately before final system shutdown.

using open source software (SIMH) I restored it to run on Mac, Windows and Linux.

I can play (text-only) games like blackjack and star trek just as I did in seventh grade.

I and my friend want to change the climate of our city so we decide to start programing to complete our dreams

Wanted to make a Minecraft mod when I was in Middle School (this was around Minecraft 1.9). Then I realized I wasn't a wonder-boy coder and that I need to learn how to code before diving into Java.

I discovered programming in high school using a Casio programmable calculator. I felt that computer programming was an extension to my thinking. I was able to find roots of complex polynomial equations by brute force. In that stone age during those days, my teacher was surprised as I did not simplify the equation but the answer was correct. Today, I saw a TI Nspire CX CAS II in a store, and I had to buy it just to check what this newer calculators have to offer. But to be honest, when I landed my first job at NEC in 1998, I was really disoriented of the Visual Studio C++ code generators to create the GUI because this was not how I expected. It felt insincere. I was also very shocked to learn that an entire code base during a development update got scrapped and deleted. To me, this hurt. These feelings, then led me to embedded systems programming, where the code that I wrote gets burned into the chip, forever. Fast forward today, I guess that I am ok with codes getting scrapped now that I'm not only doing embedded systems.

I can make what I want. Being able to create things is sort of a freedom that I enjoy. Being able to make things that help people is fulfilling.

for me it was the idea of creating for basically free besides time. Like building your own world but instead of paying for the parts you pay with having fun making stuff.

I started programming to make something new and see how would I solve some problems. One of my first project was a script to organize files on my computer. I think turning repetitive tasks into something simple with code is exciting.

I love technology, I am passionate about technology, innovation and big challenging tasks on my to do list.

I love learning new technologies

I started off as a support engineer, then moved through various different domains prioritizing comfort and a good work-life balance over actual growth and never focusing on doing what I liked. On the upside, I found some real friends during those initial years at work than I had during my college. But I soon had to face reality and steer towards doing something that made a bigger impact. I do not mean that support and operations does not make an impact, but its just too much for an introvert to handle, being on constant calls all the time! I was good at programming in college and couldn't understand why I derailed from the path I wanted to be on. I was stupid enough to go with the first job I landed without exploring all the other opportunities which were yet to come.

I took a short break from work, did some upskilling, started off by designing simple webpages, started learning DSA, joined various dev communities, expanded my LinkedIn network. I landed an okay-ish job as a web developer at a startup, worked for a year, moved to a different company and I am at a far better place right now. I finally feel satisfied with my work and totally love what I do.

My lesson? Grinding a year or two at the beginning will definitely pay off. May be not today, but soon enough. Just don't procrastinate. And most of all, consistency is the key.

I was a gamer. Not thinking for myself I followed a friend into an IT course as a last resort after leaving high school and hated it, especially programming (in my own defence, the lessons were really uninspiring). But then that same friend started to write games, and then it hit me. I could create my own games if I learned how to do programming. I pretty much changed overnight at that point and programming became my life - to a fault, you don't develop very good social skills if you lock yourself up in an attic writing heaps of code day and night. Who knew?

Not that I'm a game developer today, I only do it as a hobby. That's a field for which you need really thick skin, and better math skills than me.

That would be the moral of my story. If you are thinking about becoming a programmer - make sure you have an idea that you are really keen on building. Doesn't matter if it already exists, the process of building it to your liking should be the thing that gives you energy. If you have that, learning programming should not be an obstacle. If you don't have that, learning programming is probably going to be very boring and thus hard. One can only make so many todo apps.

I used to feel like software developers can prepare any game they want as a child and this weeeey simplified imagination carry me to this world.

I think it's a very interesting skill in today's world, and I like the intellectual and research side of it.

I think the predictivity. Computer is much more predictable than other things. And this sense makes me feel safe.

What's more I think it is because I use computer a lot for daily task. So I gradually need to learn to 'use' the computer via programming.

With the help of ChatGPT, I used C++ and Win API to create a plug-in program to help me play games automatically. Then I discovered that I could use the program to command the computer to do whatever I wanted.

I always have been interested in game coding, and now I am creating my own game and VR headset to have an "escape from reality". Reality has always been kind of boring and that was what inspired me.

There is a very famous meme for this question: - What inspired you to program? Ans: Money

Its funny, but not true obviously. I was very interested in physics, but I always had to make some simulations to solve differntial equations, I would ask ChatGPT almost always, but even it was not perfect. So I learnt python, then when I found python slow, I got into C++. Slowly, I got interested in AI modelling and studied tensorflow and keras, and today I have made hundreds of AI models and also have won several bronze medals in kaggle competitions.

Enjoyment of creating, playfulness. I still remember when I created my first lottery program that generated lottery numbers and showed them in UI. It was fun to tinker with details, try different ways to generate numbers and so on.

When I enjoy most programming it is when I have room to play with ideas and implementation. Try without fear of failure and enjoy even when I fumble while creating code.

One driving factor is how I felt programming to be easy. At low level when there are just few things to consider, programming is easy. Lately in large commercial systems there are more than few things to consider which eats up playfulness. :-/

I always liked to play, tinker and (luckily not always) break things. When I was little I started some spam blogs/websites automated with ifttt and Wordpress and seeing some success (money), come from that made me enthusiastic. Later on I discovered Open source and seeing some recognition of my work in the wild was extremely enthusiastic for me. Now I wish I could do more opensource

As a boy in I watched the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project in the seventies. It was one of the first AI movies ever made where Colossus took over the world. That inspired me. By the 80s i was a teen and Home Computers that booted into BASIC language prompt were rushing the market. Computers were slow so you learned Assembly Language and how processors and addressable memory and interrupt junp tables worked. Back then you learned everything about your computer, just like your bicycle. Been programming ever since.

Jimmy Neutron and Dexter Cartoon.

I was fascinated by Sci-Fi and couldn't help but to join the show.

Programming fascinated me because it offered a way to create something tangible out of abstract ideas. The ability to build applications and websites from scratch, and seeing them function seamlessly, was incredibly satisfying. It's like being a digital architect, designing solutions that can solve real-world problems or simply entertain and inform people. The challenge of mastering different programming languages and technologies also intrigued me, pushing me to constantly learn and grow. Ultimately, programming became a blend of creativity, problem-solving, and the joy of seeing my work come to life in the digital world.

For me I just think about what I needed, for example a to do list. Or something that fix or solve some problems.

For me, it all began at school. I was probably in 6th grade, for our Computer class we were taught to use QBASIC and something just clicked for me. I could come up with code and logics really easily and I was the best in class at it and it just got to my head.

Fast forward a few years, in 9th grade I was introduced to C ( Not to be mistaken with modern C, we were taught using Turbo C in school ) and just like before, it all just clicked for me. I was able to understand it all very easily and was writing code really well and fast.

Next year in 10th, we started C++ ( Borland C++ using Turbo C++ as the IDE to be precise ) and this is where I shifted gears up. Till I entered college, I was very interested in C++ and went out of the way to study things other than what was taught at school. I started learning C++11 and C++14 by myself and also took part in a few competitive programming competitions ( and failed miserably ). Soon, this became my passion and I would spend a lot of my time learning more and more about C++ and other languages.

My college introduced me to a variety of other languages such Python, Java, Html. I also learned C# during this time to build my projects. I built a lot of pet projects at this time to get better.

Now, programming is my passion and something I enjoy doing. So for me, it essentially all started with the school subject and it just got me really interested. Glad to be here now doing what I enjoy

The programming journey of me begins with Roblox, my game I often plays. It was a Covid lockdown when everyone has to stay at home in order to keep themselves safe and so do I. I haved played Roblox 2 years before the Covid but I haven't touched Roblox Studio, the program that will eventually begin my programming, until the Covid came along. Roblox Studio introduced me the ways to make games, script games and design games. I was curious about this platform that I have found and so I began to learn how to script. The scripting language of Roblox Studio is Luau(a scripting language based on Lua with more features like type checking, etc..., made by Roblox). After knowing more of Lua, I became bored with it and decided to explore for more. I expanded my programming knowledge with my second programming language that I have learnt, Javascript. It was rather a combination of Javascript, HyperText Markup Language and Casading Style Sheets. That was a time I have digged into surface of Web Development. Later on, I learned more programming languages like C/C++, C#, Rust, Python, Dart, Java, Kotlin and even Assembly Programming Language. Till this day, it has been a 2 year journey of diving in this programming space as a hobby generalist programmer, who wants to explore the depths of technology and is curious to find more of science, technology of today's world. I'd say that the programming space has created for me a hobby and a interest, a purpose for me to work on when I am bored and it has undoubtedly changed my life, alot!