Who's been programming the longest?

T

ThePentiumGuy

Well-known member
Joined
May 21, 2003
Messages
1,113
Location
Boston, Massachusetts
Who?

I started when I was 7, doing C++. But that doesnt 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 Im talking about seriously programming: 3 years.
About when .NET came out.

-The Pentium Guy
 
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 dont 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 Ive been programming for about 10 years; I dont remember exactly, and I dont think interpeted BASIC on an obsolete computer counts. Ive been doing VB for about five or six years.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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 Ive been doing VB.NET.

Still love it...
 
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.
 
I started with Basic on a BBC (anyone remember those - maybe they were just in England and New Zealand)
Click to expand...
England? BBC? -> British Broadcasting Company? Just kidding

Ive heard of Commandor64 before - Ive actually seen one in fact. Yikes those are old.

My friend brought in an 80s 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
 
Im 17 and Ive 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 Ive pretty much been VB only - though I enjoy playing around with (extremely simple) ASM using the RadASM IDE, and C++ .NET. Im 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.
 
ThePentiumGuy said:
England? BBC? -> British Broadcasting Company? Just kidding

Ive heard of Commandor64 before - Ive actually seen one in fact. Yikes those are old.

My friend brought in an 80s 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
Click to expand...

I forgot about commandor 64s, When I was about 8 we got one and it was a big deal as theyd 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 theyd never work, as youd 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/)
 
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
 
England? BBC? -> British Broadcasting Company? Just kidding
Click to expand...

British Broadcasting Corporation actually. And yes BBC computers were very popular in the 80s 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? :)
 
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 DMs 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.
 
I started back in 1980 doing FORTRAN and COBOL with punch cards - fun!! :)

It looks like were tied at around 25 years. God, Im sooo old!!! :(
 

Similar threads

C
This is the Marvel ‘Fantastic Four’ news we’ve been waiting for
Replies
0
Views
82
Chris Smith
C
J
The first iOS 14.5 beta has a feature we’ve been waiting years to get
Replies
0
Views
145
Jacob Siegal
J
C
Everyone’s talking about this ‘Avengers: Endgame’ plot hole, but we can explain it easily
Replies
0
Views
84
Chris Smith
C
D
Understanding very simple flow & output following tutorial
Replies
0
Views
207
ddDerelict
D
C
Apple iPhone 13 Pro review: The one with (almost) no compromises
Replies
0
Views
85
Christian de Looper
C
Back
Top