Ask HN: how did you get started in programming?

12: HTML + playing around on the internet. It is hilariously sad how badly designed sites were 12 years ago. "Hacking" emails was something so easy that a 12 year old kid with little knowledge of html could do.

I started learning CSS and newer HTML(back when I learnt HTML code was written in all caps) when I was 17 to earn some money to buy me books and a laptop for university. Did some Java in highschool and built small applet games. Then I learnt php at my first coop job(go UWaterloo!) learnt Javascript, Jquery, C# at simultaneous coops. Finally learnt Advanced Javascript(rather how to write javascript right) and fell in love with it and beyond that just kept improving my skills in online development. I keep them refines by working on multiple side projects.

12 - AMSTRAD BASIC - I wanted to create my own games. So I started to copy some games from books I had. But quickly I was bored because I found it was too slow to get things done. So basicly after the presentation screen I stopped there. Later when I got a PC, I did a calculator with BASIC again. But got bored again. I didn't knew about C language or others. I did some software cracking (reading ASM and patching) but got bored again. Now I do mostly Python, I'm proficient in several language, I'm happy :-)

tldr: I learned programming slowly at my rhythm but that's Python that triggered my “hacker” fiber and some reading like ESR books and books about how internet and firefox were created...

5 - QBASIC - My parents tell me how I spent lots of time on the computer programming mostly in QBASIC. Sounds crazy but I have a few memories of reading the help and trying to context clue words. It was hard because I couldn't understand most of the words. Read the programs that came with QBASIC to guess what statements did what. I specifically have a memory of context cluing that the word integer meant number. Of course I couldn't do much. I could only change the screen color and print text to the screen, afaik. I tried to create my own version of dosshell/win 3.1 in QBASIC.

19, Perl, I was going to school for Physics and I spent a lot of time mining spectroscopic data from mysql databases, converting binary dumps to csv files, etc... so I started to automate it. Eventually learned that I enjoyed writing scripts and automating things more than writing papers.

Got into networking/security, web development, and data infrastructure design. Started writing code in Python, C, and Java and catching myself up on the fundamentals of CS. Took a job as a developer, then another, then another....

13/14 - HTML/CSS - Angelfire - This turned quickly into BASIC for TI graphing calculators. Wasn't until 17ish that I started learning VB, Java, and PHP. Now I focus mostly on Ruby & JS.

Programming was always fun for me because I could build useful things that people use. It was great to write helpful formula apps for the calculator and give them away to friends. Same went for helping people with simple web sites and eventually applications.

10, Atari BASIC. It was around 1990. My father bought me a computer, for playing games, but I quickly discovered I could make my own (lame) games by myself. They sucked for sure, but I was fascinated by the power I had on the machine. How amazing and frustrating that was to see the machine was doing exactly what I told it, and nothing more.

19 - iOS - Ray Wenderlich Tutorial