I remember the very first time I pushed something onto a server via FTP. Some acquaintance on a gaming forum gave me a subdomain + hosting on their server to play around with. I must have been 8 years old or so... I had no idea how it worked, but was completely amazed that I put something on the internet. I consider myself quite lucky to have found somebody patient enough to walk me through setting up my FTP client.

I started building things in PHP pretty shortly after that. Not sure how early that was, but I distinctly remember building a gradebook system for my 4th grade teacher during class. I used to finish up my classwork early and jet over to the computer to work on it. I don't think it wound up being fully functional at the end, though.

It's interesting being in my very early twenties and saying I've been programming for 10+ years. On HN this isn't very unique, but in the public-at-large people tend to look at me with either suspicion or amazement. Though, I usually immediately follow saying "10 years" with, "Though, that doesn't mean I was any good for most of them... ;)"

Fun stuff.