survey

[gusl]

1) Did you write computer programs as a child?

2) What language?

3) How did you learn? Did you have someone teach you?

4) Did you ever meet other kids who programmed?

I think most kids today no longer have this opportunity.


MY ANSWERS:

1) Yes. I started when I was 7.
2) Basic, on my MSX. Later, DOS QBasic (which no longer required line numbers).
3) I learned from examples: whenever you loaded a game on the cassette, the code listing was right there. I still don't remember what my first program was (probably something with PRINT and INPUT), or why I decided to write it. I started out by myself, but occasionally learned things from my uncle who was a programmer, or read something in magazines.
4) Nope. Not that I know.

Comments

[darius.livejournal.com]

I started in Basic when I was 11-12. There was a summer camp where I got at some computers for the first time; after that I learned from books and magazines. It was another year or two before I had a computer to try things out on. There were a few other local kids into computers, but we didn't interact nearly as much as I learned on my own.

Byte was a cool magazine back then (early 80s). I'd like to see more code-intensive writing like that online. Also, my lack of a computer meant it was just as easy to get into less-popular languages like Pascal and Forth. The first issue of Byte I saw had this weird Lisp program and I wanted to learn what the hell that was about...