How do the young start programming nowadays?

Question

Hello

Back in the late 80s/early 90s I learned GWBasic on MS-DOS. Then Turbo Pascal. Then Turbo C/Asm. Later I stumbled into PHP and finally made a career out of Perl programming.

I'm curious how actual under-25s found their way into programming. There is a lot of discussion about what path you would steer your children if you wanted them to learn programming, but I would like to hear from the newer generation to find out their more modern experiences about becoming a programmer.

Note: no stories from people who first discovered programming at university.

Answer 1

I'm 21 (and 11 months).

We got our first computer when I was - 4 years old, I think? Something along those lines, at least.

I fairly quickly managed to pick up enough to use it for basic stuff (i.e., start games). I also have a vague recollection of one night - it was around 10 PM, so I should really have been sleeping then - where my parents couldn't make something work, but where I could tell them what they had to do. I'm pretty sure I hadn't started school back then, so that means I was no more than 5 years old at that point in time.

In other words, it was pretty clear I had a knack for these things fairly early.

I did type in a couple of BASIC programs from books before then, but I think my first piece of actual code, written by myself, was when I was 11 or so. That was in QBasic.

Following that, I progressed to Windows via Delphi, and ported the two "larger" applications I'd written to a graphical environment in 2001 or 2002 (I think I started working with it in 2001, and released the first version of the apps in 2002). It's still my favorite language, and I continue to work with it when I have the possibility, but I've also worked with many languages since then - PHP, SQL, C#, C++, Java, Haskell, Prolog, Javascript, VBA... and I'm sure I've forgotten one or two on that list.

I've also, purely for fun, written a small .COM file in pure 16-bit x86 assembly which does nothing but busy-wait for 4 minutes, while using 100% CPU - because 4 minutes is how long it takes for the coffee to be ready once the water boils. After writing the code, I then assembled it by hand, looking up opcodes in manuals and on reference websites, because, well, I could. (I don't even drink coffee, but the pure geekiness of it was worth it.)

Answer 2

I think that my story would qualify pretty well for this question. At the time of this writing, I'm actually 12 years old. I got started with VB6 (yes, VB, I know, argh) when I was 7, as my dad showed it to me. That got me really intrigued, and, with the help of my dad, I built my first app: a word-search solver.

Later, I moved into learning HTML: my dad directed me towards W3Schools, and I spent my free time examining the tutorials on HTML, Javascript, CSS, etc. When I was 9 or 10, we had a guest who was a C# programmer. He recommended some C# books for me, which I used to familiarize myself with the language.

Two summers ago, I took a C# course thru the local university's extension classes, which further increased my understanding of programming. I found myself very intrigued into books and blogs like Joel on Software, which then brought me here, to Stack Overflow.

Lately, I've written a few data collection and analysis programs for a non-profit, as well as starting a programming club at school, creating an open-source project (SOApiDotNet, a library for the pre-alpha Stack Overflow API; by the way, if you're looking for something like this, use SXAPI instead), and more.

So, for how I found my way into programming, long story short:

   1. My dad showed me VB6
   2. Learned HTML, JS, etc.
   3. Learned C# (books and a college course)
   4. Found Stack Overflow!