When did your journey with programming start and why?

[D-e-X]

Title says it all. When did you start programming, and why?

Personally I started as a 12 year old editing source code for the 317 build of Runescape, making a private server. (yes... Runescape)
I ended up getting interested in how I could write something like this from scratch, and therefore started learning Java which led on to C++ and such, and realized I had a great aspiration for game development.
Weird path I guess, but it led me here, and I can't complain about that.

[lotios611]

I used to play a game called Roblox, which is basically a 3d game engine/editor that lets you place blocks in your game and script them with what they call "RobloxLua," which is basically a Lua binding of some of the engine with some of the features of Lua disabled. I got interested in scripting my own levels, so I read a few tutorials and started hanging around the scripting subforum on Roblox's forums.

It was there where I learned about C++. One of the best scripters on Roblox had posted some C++ code, and I really wanted to learn C++. So, I downloaded DevC++, went to cplusplus.com, and started reading the tutorial. After I was done with the tutorial, I messed around with Batch files and made a quiz game. Then, I somehow found out that I could make games with C++. I have been programming ever since, picking up new languages as I moved along.

The funny thing is, I am at the point now where I realise that Roblox was made with DirectX (or something that raps it) using C++ to program it.

[k1net1k]

I started with HTML edited in notepad when i was about 13. a couple years later i discovered php and shit myself when i realised i could make 1 header and footer page and include it on each page !!
I had made some really old games (typing the code out of a book) on atari or some shite plugged into the tv when i was really young, but that doesnt count.

[trufun202]

Ever since my NES days, I've wanted to make my own games. Game development has always been the driving force for me to learn programming. For me, it started with QBasic on my Packard Bell 8086, making little game info apps, where you choose an option from a menu and it displays various video game related facts. A few years later, I managed to make a clunky version of Pong in QBasic and moved onto Pascal programming in high school. I actually didn't pickup C/C++ until college.

[N64vSNES]

I actually came across a video about command prompt commands and how to use it for basic tasks, I saw people making text based games in related videos so I wrote hangman in DOS

EDIT: ^This was at age 11 coming on 12

After that my dad offered his old C book because he couldn't understand it, I moved up onto C++ and MFC/Win32 applications and then I decided to move onto game programming.

Now I'm pretty confident with C++ I'm looking into C# and then to *gulp*.....Java (dramatic music)

[xiphirx]

When I was 10, I was REALLY into Zelda. After beating 90% of the games, I decided to try and create my own Zelda game. I landed on http://www.zfgc.com/ (still visit :3) and Game Maker (woot). After about 1-2 years of using GM, I got bored and frustrated. I started using HTML and FrontPage (heeell yeah) and made really bad websites. Afterwards, at age 14 or so, I started C++... haven't stopped. I think I'm a bit too inexperienced based on how much time I have taken so far, but oh well, as long as I get to the point I want.

[dandymcgee]

Making bots for Diablo II. The most useful of which moved all of my perfect gems from my stash to my inventory, then from my inventory to my trade screen. Got so pissed when people would ask to see my 40 perfect gems (max size of inventory) and I'd have to click 'em all one-by-one for them to say "Ah cool, not interested" and leave.

[TheBuzzSaw]

I was probably 7 years old. I was fascinated with games and how they worked. The family computer had QuickBASIC 4.5, which was capable of producing actual EXEs. I'm not sure where it came from because everyone I knew had QBasic, which would run the code from the IDE but had no way of producing a stand-alone binary. I wrote multiple goofy little programs just to see what I could do. My first program took a line of input from the keyboard and output the same line with all the commas removed. (My siblings, to this day, love to ask me if I've written any comma-filtering programs recently.)

For a while, my ambition was to create a game that would run on a Bulletin Board System (BBS); such games were often termed "door games". I was a huge fan of the door game Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD). I found a development framework designed for use in QuickBASIC, so I tried that, but I don't think I made it any farther than the Hello World sample (though it did work on the BBS). So, I turned my attention back toward the included games: Nibbles and Gorillas. I tried so hard to study the code, but it was so confusing.

When I was 10, I received an introductory book to C/C++. I don't think I even had a compiler yet. I was just so interested in learning "the language" for computer programming. I read that book everywhere. I even read it while relaxing in a hammock on family camping trips. Finally, my brother brought home a massive box containing Borland C++. The box contained a dozen books, so that's why it was so big. It had thirteen 1.44 MB disks required for installation. I continued to receive better/bigger C++ books for birthdays and stuff.

At some point, my brother got the book Flights of Fantasy, which taught 3D graphics in DOS games. I was super excited, but the lessons were way too hard for me, and it taught lots of low level control mechanisms for changing the display resolution and stuff. I was too used to BASIC and its simple graphics commands: SCREEN 12 (640x480 16 colors unless you used palettes) and SCREEN 13 (320x240 256 colors).

I could go on about the various transitions I made. I eventually went to college, got a degree, and discovered OpenGL. :P

[DStudios]

I always wonder how a video game was made since I was young. When I was nine I started animating (terrible animations), a year later I started using flash and made my first game in. After a while, I took a break for a few months and went back to it. Now, a few years later, I have realised I have tried everything that is involved in developing a game, for music I learnt how to play the drums, programming was just from scripting in actionscript for awhile and then moving on to actual programming, animation in flash and pivot stickfigure animator (pivot was only when I began animation), art (which i am not very good at) paint, paint.net, adobe photoshop elements, and for level design, I used flash, udk. And now I am learning c++.

[eatcomics]

Well I was similar to DStudios.... I was bored one day and wanted to learn more about game dev... then I stumbled on Adventures in Game Dev. Never looked back :D

[pritam]

Having played lots of fun games on my brothers Amiga 500 and later the first family PC I was very intrigued to learn how to develop games myself. I bought myself a small book on C++ and after a while I got to the misconception that C++ wasn't really used to make games, I read an article in a magazine about Blitz Basic, the magazine came with a CD which had a Blitz2D demo on it and I started learning from the example games that were included with the install. Later my parents bought me a copy of Blitz3D which came with a very nice and usefull manual. Stuck with it for a long time and visited the blitz forums frequently to learn more (which is also where I found out about AIGD for the first time), still use it from time to time. Dabled in C++ now and then because I really wanted to learn it and now I'm learning that more seriously.

Later I found out that BlitzBasic was originally developed for the Amiga which I thought was really cool, similar to Amos (which is probably more famous, I'm not sure) on the same system.

I would like to say I learned a lot about game development with Blitz, the only thing that wasn't supported too well was interacting with the system, using DLLs was somewhat hackish and ugly but worked when needed.

[RyanPridgeon]

HTML when I was around 6 or 7, then didn't really do anything more advanced until at 11 I was stuck with no internet and a cracked copy of Flash 5... so I learned AS and eventually got into real programming.

[ParticleGames]

I started playing a ton of computer games when I was 7, and when I was 11 I finally got interested in how I could make one. About 6 months later I found myself working with Game Maker and all of those "Make-Your-Own-MMORPG" type programs. Another few months past and I realized I wasn't getting satisfaction, knowing I wasn't really make games myself. When I was about 12 and a half I discovered C++ and started teaching myself. A year later, here I am

[Rapid Cube]

During my second year of high school, my friend and I began experimenting in flash to see if we could make games in it. We were using actionscript 2.0 and every game we made had code in every conceivable place you could put it (except for the timeline). During this time whenever I had a problem the first thing I always did was go to my friend for help. Eventually he refused to help me any more, and looking back I'm very glad he did this. After he stopped helping me, I made a habit of searching the web for help as well as posting my problems on forums. Ironically he's regularly asking for my help now. After nearly a year of working in as2, I got a book on actionscript 3.0. The transition from as2 to as3 was extremely painful because I had to give up nearly of all the bad programming habits I developed using as2. As my designs became more object oriented I was using the timeline less and less until finally I stopped using flash altogether and started using flash develop (with the free flex compiler) instead (also the hacked version of flash we were using outside of school was buggy). Me and my friend were able to spend a lot of our time in school learning how to program. One of our teachers (who's class I took at least 6 times because of this) let us study programming instead of doing classwork. Around senor year I started looking into C++ and SDL. Since then I've been learning about win32 and (due to hardware restraints) GDI.

[Van-B]

I think I must have been about 7, my dad come home with a ZX Spectrum when they were just released, and some truly terrible games. Games were very expensive, so it was few and far between - most of the available games were published by Sinclair, and they all cost like £7-£10 - back in 1982 that was pretty expensive. Anyway, a lot of computing magazines would publish code listings, that you could type in, with some glimmer of hope that your writing a game, and it will work, and you'll be able to save to tape. I don't think anyone learned very much from them - most of the programs consisted of data statements full of seemingly random values that had to be entered precisely.
Not too long after we got the Speccy, we discovered that one of our neighbors was a pro game developer, and he gave us a copy of all of his games and his book, which was like a long tutorial on writing RPG games. So myself and my dad worked through the book, and I just kept on after that, on the C64, CPC464, ST etc. Mostly used BASIC, but did have a whale of a time with SEUCK on the C64. These days I use BASIC and C++, and am struggling through the final stages of my first iOS, C++ game.