Where did it all begin for you?

[ismetteren]

It all started with HTML for me. Inspired by my friends, big brothers, friend, me and my friend decided to make a website. So my firends big brothers friend made a HTML template (a table with 3 collums) we could put random stuff into. We made the ugliest meaningless webpages you've ever seen. My friend lost interest, but i countinued to asp and php(wich i REAAALY sucked at). At some point i dicided that i would make real programs(IIRC it was due to the fact that you had to pay to get your websites online), so i got into java. It was here i finally understood what programming was about.

[ultimatedragoon69]

Well the beginning of all this started when i was about 6 years old. During that time i had no idea how complicated these things were, both on the drawing board and on more of a technical standpoint. Anyway i guess how it started was my mother signed me up for some crappy computer classes involving electrical lego's. After awhile of this class about lets say 2 weeks, my teacher told me that i should learn more of a hardware perspective on these machines. Of course with my way of thinking i was like "Well that just sounds like more work and no way would i do that". Of course like a good teacher that was, he went to my mother to talk to her about it "well it was more or less over the phone".
So then BAM! i got huge books on A+ Computer hardware and my mother would take me to classes after school to learn these things. About 6 months later i went to some convention to show principles of all the schools in the area how a computer works underneath its cool shell. was kinda cool there, hell i liked the food the most. Ontop of that there were alot of cool students there. Okay now fast forward about 8 or 9 years and i took classes once again on computer hardware, mainly to refresh on things that i learned from quite some time ago. Those classes lasted about 2 years. Which i can give you a guess what happened after that. You got it i started programming and learning more in depth not only hardware but software. This was the start of something wonderful i believe.
Anyway that's my story, of course that's all i can remember anyway.

Have a Nice Day!

[hurstshifter]

Well. I've loved games all my life. I've owned practically every system and could probably spend eternity just talking about games/consoles/computers with a friend. But, there comes a point in a hardcore gamer's life where playing them just isn't good enough anymore. I knew from lots of research over the years that C/++ was the language to go with if you were serious about starting in development so that's where I began. I've only been going at it for a year or so now and didn't actually start "game" programming until a couple months ago when I picked up SDL. From here on in, who knows.

[dandymcgee]

I started off quite differently than most of the people here. Anyone that knows me knows that I am not a big gamer. As a matter of fact, I had absolutely no desire to create my own video games, rather I just wanted to know how the software was made and how it worked.

It started off with a game (yes I know I said I'm not a big gamer, but there's one game in particular that I played A LOT)... Diablo II. I was really into this game, and if it wasn't for Blizzard's total disowning of the servers, I might still be playing it. Some random guy I met in a game clued me in to a "secret hack program" (MapHack, Stat Booster, whatever his story was he got my attention). Of course I wanted to try it out so he gave me a link. I downloaded it and ran it (this was right before I formatted my C: drive because I thought "format" meant "rearrange files and make them neater" ). It took control of the mouse, dropped the entirety of my equipped gear on the ground, exited the application, and shutdown my computer. I was about as angry as I'd ever been, but at the same time I was extremely excited and NEEDED to know what the hell just happened and how. After a bit of research (yup I knew what "google" was) I found out that the "hack" program was actually a scam program written in the AutoIt scripting language (originally meant for Windows Automation, but is now essentially a full-blown scripting language http://www.autoitscript.com).

I ended up learning AutoIt and became fairly competent with it. I took a Computer Science class at school where they introduced me to Visual Basic 6.0 which I immediately dismissed as "the worst #^&@!%^ 'programming' language I've ever used". I knew I needed something better and I ended up settling for C++. It took a few attempts, but I eventually stuck with it and have loved every minute of it since (Even the "Process returned with status 3"s ).

[Moosader]

I guess for me, my stepbro was like "I want to make games!" so my stepdad bought him Power Basic.
Ended up he just changed the name in the credits of the sample stuff, while I read up on basic in a nice big book on it. I was maybe like 7? I tried making text adventures but I couldn't figure out how so I just made word libs all the time. XD

Eventually I got a copy of Visual Basic 5 learning edition and used that for _YEARS_... I was maybe 10ish. Sort of like Yahztee, I made a bunch of crappy VB Adventure games (Attack of the Mutant Lawnmowers). I played around with RPG Maker quite a bit, which is kind of how I got into doing game art.

At 14 I took a C++ programming class in college and kept learning, and eventually when I was 16 my friend Claus suggested Allegro to me, so I weened myself off VB (ugh) and basically have been trial-and-erroring my way through my games since then. :P Not a very good, or efficient, way to learn.

[eatcomics]

@dandy: Thanks for the autoit link, I've had some tasks needing to be automated

[cypher1554R]

Games were always something amazing for me, since I was a kid. Whenever I played one, I was always questioning how they did this and that.. you press something on the joystick, and the screen changes accordingly.. wow.
My first run-in with programing was at the 1st year in high-school. Me and my friend were messing with Linux, and played cool with basic Perl skills. My very first program was a Perl script that takes a number from keyboard, and outputs the square value of it humble, but I was proud of it. I was amazed how you can write something that takes input and does exactly what you've written with it, and very soon fell in love with programming. Moved to C++, and here I am. C++ in combination with various APIs is my choice.

[thejahooli]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0B6Gbsu ... annel_page
Was randomly searching for a game maker tutorial video (back when I used it) and, after watching this, decided to screw gamemaker and start c++.

[rolland]

I blame it all on our local high school's Robotics Club. See, my mom decided I needed to join a school club when I joined high school for some reason. That was summer '07. (I'll let you do the math.) After deciding I didn't want to join Weenie club NJHS, I recalled my older brother was in Robotics. I decided to ask him about it, and he was very enthusiastic about my joining it. I however, was doubtful. I asked what I would do there. He told me they needed a programmer as the last one had just graduated. After a conversation about what the Robotics Club's Programmer would have to do (which he knew almost nothing about), and a lot of googling (yes, I was always one of those kids that knew how to google), I finally worked out that I would need to learn C. personally, I feel that was a pretty impressive feat. However, looking back, not really. After all, the software was called EasyC.

Anyway, I showed up to the first summer meeting of break (yes, we meet over the summer--I think we just hate our lives) ready to go. I can still remember the conversation between my brother and Mr. Tony, our main sponsor (and the owner of a small robot company). Brother: "This is my brother. He's gonna program the robot." Mr. Tony: delighted shock.

I went in there with a very basic knowledge of C and left with a head full of vastly complicated concepts that made my head hurt; at least they were at the time. Later, at the second or third meeting after the start of school, Mr. Tony gave us a laptop. "Us" gave it to me, and dubbed me "Keeper of the Laptop" until I graduate.

That was when I really got into programming. Since I didn't have any specific code to write (as the rest of the team had to build the robot first), I installed a c++ compiler and got crackin' on my own projects. Those are some of my fondest memories. Sitting around and watching everyone else get yelled and complained at while Tony Wagner (the other "programmer") and I drank Vault and worked on my own projects. Those were the days.

Somewhere between then and now, I picked up NDS and Wii homebrew, and have since moved on to C#/xna. Yes, I know. "Grr! Argh! Traitor!" Relax. I'll be back to good old c++ soon enough.

Oh, and if anyone knows what I'm talking about, we're FRC team 1684. That one that crashed the robot into the wall during autonomous period. I blame Tony Wagner.

[Trask]

I knew I was going to get involved in computers at the ripe old age of 4 when I watched Terminator 2 for the 12,000th time and turned to my mom and said that I'm going to make robots.

From there, I was pretty far away from computers and everything until high school where I started taking programming classes. Somewhere along my freshman year in college I began taking a serious look into making games, however I never found resources on the subject matter. I was pretty proficent in your basics and some moderate and advanced forms of C++ programming, but I needed a push in the right direction on how to turn that into a game. Since then I've found books and enrolled in UAT with a bachelors in Software Engineering and major in Game Programming. Sadly, I've been unable to continue my education due to tuition costs, but I plan on returning as soon as I can and I'm working off of the many books and sites available today.

[Panama]

Wow, it's really interesting reading about how you all got into programming. Ok my turn

So about 3 years ago, I had just got my first computer and was in the habit of spending all my time (and i emphasise the 'all') playing PC games. At the time my favourite game was an RTS called Dawn of War. I sat there one afternoon playing it and it suddenly hit me how cool games actually are. I decided to do some research into how games were made because at the time I had no idea about programming. After a few hours of searching the internet, I found out all about this little thing called C++. Intrigued, I looked for some tutorials on how to do this thinking to myself, well how hard can creating a good 3d RTS game be? ..... I was stunned when I found out the answer to that.

So I told my old man about what I had been looking at and discovered he used to program in FORTRAN. He bought me a book on C++ and from there on I've been hooked on software and game development. I started making little command line apps and then eventually moved onto to win32 programming and DirectX. 3 years down the line I have a decent amount of experience with C++ and am hoping to go to university to do either Software Engineering or Games Programming.

[Calypso]

Probably grade 10 when I started programming in BASIC for the TI-83 calculator. I then went to college for web development and did HTML/CSS/PHP for a while until getting a job as a flash game developer, working on games from GANZ entertainment (Webkinz games). Transitioned to iOS and started learning Objective-c. I have been doing that for around a year and a half. I'm 22 now and I'm a lead iOS developer at a social network type app company.

[jmcintyretech]

I'm not sure WHY in particular but programming caught my interest when I was about 12. Not knowing jack shit I bought a C++ book and ended up way over my head, and reverted to making shitty, basic games with Game Maker.

When I was around 14 or 15, I picked up Visual Basic.NET and finally had the intelligence to wrap my head around programming logic and solving problems with nothing but code.

Fast forward four years and here I am with working knowledge of Java, C#, and C++ and a few solid projects under my belt. Starting college as a Computer Science major next week and looking forward to a career as a programmer!

[0x0000000]

Well, I started programming when I was about 10 years old, I was just learning some basic HTML
and thought that it was awesome. So when I was 11 I decided to look into some
REAL programming languages. I picked up C++ because most people recommended it for a first
language, and then pissed myself. I slowly began to understand it and I made some basic programs
in it. My real development began half a year later, when I was advanced enough to do some
SFML, I was really proud when I moved a rectangle around the screen .

Well and here I am now. I am currently learning C and understand some basic x86 Assembly.
I turned 12 in May.

[K-Bal]

Well and here I am now. I am currently learning C and understand some basic x86 Assembly.
I turned 12 in May.

That's awesome for someone at your age. You should stick to it My advice would be to start thinking of a little project and try to finish it. Then you will always have something polished that you can show as a testimonial. I'm learning this the hard way right now as I'm trying to apply for game programming positions with mostly half-done tech demos in my portfolio.

Btw, I'm 25 and I just got my master's degree in computer engineering. I started programming in a school class when I was 15.