Who's been programming the longest?

[ThePentiumGuy]

Who?

 

I started when I was 7, doing C++. But that doesn't count becuase all I could do was basic input and output ("Enter your name"... "Your Name is <>"), without really understanding anything (then I found vb a few years later and :D things took off from there) - so basically 8 or 9 years.

 

But if I'm talking about seriously programming: 3 years.

About when .NET came out.

 

-The Pentium Guy

[thenerd]

2 years.

 

I'm adding this text because it told me that my message was too short

[snarfblam]

I started with "Applesoft BASIC". My brother had an old Apple //c that he gave to me. I was about 10, which would mean that this was around 1994. I don't know if Applesoft BASIC really counts, but I would spend hours at a time poking and peeking in the computer and seeing what I could make happen. Change the cursor, cause the screen to scroll, directly access video memory, I even found many nifty machine language subroutines that I called. Eventually my brother found QBasic on the Windows 95 CD in a folder called "oldmsdos" or "olddos" or something like that; from there on to VB6, and here I am now with VB.Net.

 

So technically I've been programming for about 10 years; I don't remember exactly, and I don't think interpeted BASIC on an obsolete computer counts. I've been doing VB for about five or six years.

[coldfusion244]

Started with Basic, then QBasic, VB4,5,6, then C++,PHP, x86 asm, 68xxx asm... by far I love C++ and PHP the most then asm, do alot of embedded systems with basic and asm still... vb and php are just for fun :) About 12 years.

[michael_hk]

8 years

 

Pascal -> C++ -> Java -> ASP/PHP -> C#

[schenz]

I have only been doing "real" coding for about three years as well, but I started playing with it 21 years ago with my old Commodore 64, and justprogressed from there.

[samsmithnz]

12 Years now. I started with Basic on a BBC (anyone remember those - maybe they were just in England and New Zealand) when I was 14 at school, and then Modula-2, C and Pascal in University. I used VB6 for 3 years out of college and for the last 2 years I've been doing VB.NET.

 

Still love it...

[penfold69]

ZX81-Basic -> BBC Basic -> GWBasic -> QBasic -> C/C++/VB3/COBOL/PASCAL -> Delphi/VB4-6/C++/Java/ASP -> VB.NET/C#.Net

 

In all.. about.. err... however long since the ZX81 came out! (yeah, I had a 16k upgrade brick too!)

 

B.

[ThePentiumGuy]

I started with Basic on a BBC (anyone remember those - maybe they were just in England and New Zealand)

England? BBC? -> British Broadcasting Company? Just kidding

 

I've heard of Commandor64 before - I've actually seen one in fact. Yikes those are old.

 

My friend brought in an 80's laptop at school. My GOD that was HUGE - the screen was about the size of a gameboy screen (SMALL), and the laptop was about the size of a mini-desktop - Literally. Talk about portable. We were doing some BASIC programming on it... it seems as though you have to turn off the computer to exit out of the BASIC programming environment? Sheesh, that must have been ab itch if you were programminga lot.

 

-The Pentium Guy

[3xodus]

I'm 17 and I've been programming on and off since I started in QBasic when I was 11. My Dad showed me QBasic and as I remember I only learned the basics (using variables, conditional statements and such). Then I got a cut-down version of Delphi 4 on a cover disk which got me into Windows writing GUI applications. I heard about VB on the internet, and borrowed VB6.0 from a friend. Since then I've pretty much been VB only - though I enjoy playing around with (extremely simple) ASM using the RadASM IDE, and C++ .NET. I'm also trying to learn C#, though VB.NET is my main focus.

 

So altogether 6 years, but only 2 serious years of effort. Not that it shows.

[samsmithnz]

England? BBC? -> British Broadcasting Company? Just kidding

 

I've heard of Commandor64 before - I've actually seen one in fact. Yikes those are old.

 

My friend brought in an 80's laptop at school. My GOD that was HUGE - the screen was about the size of a gameboy screen (SMALL), and the laptop was about the size of a mini-desktop - Literally. Talk about portable. We were doing some BASIC programming on it... it seems as though you have to turn off the computer to exit out of the BASIC programming environment? Sheesh, that must have been ab itch if you were programminga lot.

 

-The Pentium Guy

 

I forgot about commandor 64's, When I was about 8 we got one and it was a big deal as they'd only just came out. This was before the days of single sided disks (remember having to turn those buggers over?), we had cassette tapes which took forever to load. I do remember getting a book out of the library and typing up a basic program, but they'd never work, as you'd always have a typo but not understand what was wrong...

 

The BBC, later turned into an Acorn and then dyed in the mid ninetys... (http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/bbc/)

[Denaes]

About 3 years really.

 

I used to do Hypercard on my Mac Plus when I was like 12 or so... but nothing else until I took a course in college and realized I loved VB6, then VB.Net much more :D

[Jay1b]

England? BBC? -> British Broadcasting Company? Just kidding

 

British Broadcasting Corporation actually. And yes BBC computers were very popular in the 80's and were marketed by the BBC, government sponsored thing. They was used heavily in educational establishments and many people had them at home as well.

 

I think some of you guys started programming WAY to early, being a child is about that. You shouldnt start to program until your about 14, enjoy life, it goes past very fast.

 

PS its my birthday soon, u wouldnt of guessed huh? :)

[PROKA]

I started with vb.net in september 2003 :) so I'm quite new into the field

[TheWizardofInt]

TRS-80 , color computer - I actually 'spoke' to the Eliza AI (which required me to constantly rewind my tape recorder)

 

And - I admit it - I wrote a program for Dungeons and Dragons that allowed you to generate a random army in accordance with the DM's guide parameters. It was the first program I ever sold, through TRS (pre-Wizards of the West Coast owners of AD&D).

 

At UConn: PLC - punch cards and read outs

 

When I got to the Navy, I got 'the schiznick':

 

Unysis 248 - Pre-Pentium running 'Brown Bag Software' for a menu, X-Tree Gold for an explorer, at an astounding 8 MHz and 64K of RAM

 

Which enabled me to write PERS, a program in dBase 3.3+ that was the first of its kind for performing nuclear maintenance record keeping. The program took 5 minutes to load and reduced our pre-ORSE record preparation from 70 man hours to 15 minutes.

 

So, all told, I have been doing this off and on for 25 years and, other than that one class in UCONN, I have never done anything but read the book.

[Machaira]

I started back in 1980 doing FORTRAN and COBOL with punch cards - fun!! :)

 

It looks like we're tied at around 25 years. God, I'm sooo old!!! :(

[TheWizardofInt]

Tell me about it.

 

But I figure about five years until retirement the way I am going, and that ain't bad.

[Machaira]

Just 5 years?!? Must be nice. I'll be lucky to ever be able to retire (not that I want to as I love coding).