I'm doing a python project at uni, and was talking to one of my lecters about how hardly anyone on my course can code. (nor can they type, but don't get me started on that!)

I'm 29, and study Physics (accidently took some years out)..

I learned back on a BBC micro, and kinda went from there, via pascal, qbasic, perl, vb, java, c# and everything else..

When I was at school (92-99) nearly everyone doing maths/physics could program to one extent or the other.

He said when he was at uni, everyone could do electronics, and lecturers wondered why no one could fix cars and bikes any more..

So It leaves me wondering what everyone's up to now? or is this the generation of consumption and facebook?

Also as a side note.. how did and of you guys/gals start off programming?

My father taught me the basics of code using DOS with BASIC when I was 10. I coded a small "guess the number" game and various other tidbits that I found amused me.

Then came websites/HTML/CSS that every kid now has but back before the damn WYSIWYG editors that produce the most god-awful code on the internets you see now. I learned HTML in Notepad.

Then IRC was a huge thing with mIRC in my teen era... so I figured out coding in that very basic scripting interface to make some fairly comprehensive "bots". Also during this time MUD's were big so I found and download a C/C++ MUD server and ran it on a machine nobody used in our house. (my dad had 8 computers networked in our basement back in the late 80's before "household computing" really took on.)

This sparked me to learn C/C++ so I could modify the source code to make it do what I wanted. Then on linux I did various C++/Qt apps and then switched to FLTK because of the lightweight libraries and that the clients didn't need to download any libraries to their computer. It was all in the binary.

And it continued... I would decide I want to learn a language, come up with a program to do, and then code that program in whatever language I had picked. Ruby and Perl I learned regressing to my teen times by coding a multi-threaded channel control/trivia/game/flood/etc bot for an IRC network I run. I wrote the same bot in both languages. Then I use perl for Sysadmin stuff as well.. ruby is just fun.

Now I decided I wanted to learn python - So I did pyPianobar for the N900 .

I've never had any official training ... this is all just simply fun for me. Nothing is more exciting than to be sitting in front of my computer creating something from nothing .

Programming? I'm in the wrong forum I was outside today replacing the carbuerator on my Power King tractor

My Kids spend all their spare time on on World of Warcraft. This sounds bad, but when I looked at what else they are doing it surprised me, in terms of actual activities. There is not enough time in the day. I have never heard them say they are bored.

The real truth of it is they have so much choice open to them these days that hacking a bit code or digging into how the computer works is not half as interesting as a good Frag or whatever its called on WOW these days.

Oh and the schools don't seem that interested to teach it to them in an interesting way.

Well I started with pascal at the age of eight or something. Can't really remember that much, but I think my cousin taught be some C at the time as well. Later on I learned Java but never developed anything big. For a few years I've been doing Cobol for a living and started looking at greener pastures with Python and C++.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and did some MIPS at a course in uni some time ago. Loved it.

Well if you're on a technical uni there are a lot of people who actually know how to code. No worry about that.

for physics apparently it's all about CUDA now tho..

The very first bits of code I wrote were in BASIC, on a teletype-style terminal when I had just turned 17 at high school. This thing had a roll of paper instead of a screen and a keyboard to type stuff on. Offline storage consisted of a device which would punch your lines of code onto a roughly 1 inch (2.5cms) wide paper tape which could then be rolled up and kept safe.

To use the terminal, you had to take the special telephone that sat next to it in the cupboard, place the handset into the acoustic coupler at the side of the keyboard and press the button on the phone which caused it to connect to the mainframe at the city university some 5 miles away.

After learning more basic, plenty of COBOL and a tiny bit of 6502 assembler at college, I bought myself a 16k Sinclair Spectrum and taught myself Z80 assembler. Over the next few years, I owned a Sinclair QL, some old thing with an 8-inch floppy drive that ran CP/M, an Amstrad PPC512 luggable and various other bits and pieces of kit.

My day job between 1992 and late 2000 involved writing reservations software for the tour operator/travel market, which gave me an opportunity to learn a bit of C for interfacing to Galileo, Viewdata and Unicorn systems. I went to work for an ISP in early 2001 and these days I do most of my coding in Python, but the stuff that I learned in the early days has stood me in good stead none the less.

I think mikec hit the nail on the head - back in my younger days, computers didn't do very much 'out of the box' and there wasn't much commercial software available. If you wanted to find out what your new toy was capable of, you had no choice but to roll your sleeves up and write the code yourself.

Interesting thread!

Well, I started coding ActionScript for Flash years ago (Flash 5).
Then got tired of all that Flash and started to dislike it. So I started to code PHP and SQL.
Somewhat around 2001/2002 (when Gennto RC4 was released) I started to hack around with BASH. Writing little BASH based tools. Most known: OTRtool (http://wiki.onlinetvrecorder.com/ind...nux#OTRtool.sh). And many other mostly for my personal use.

Used a lot of BASH for the daily work (Molecular Modeling).
http://olausson.de/scriptarchive

Soon bash reached it's limit and I searched for an alternate programing language with good text processing support. Well Perl was to cryptic, so I ended up with Python and fell in love with it from the first Shebang.

Until some weeks ago I never coded GUI's for my tools (never had any use for a GUI cause most scripts were run on Linux Clusters)

But then the N900 came out and here we go, my first GUI-Tool for my phone (By the way, any help appreciated, especially integrating the tool into the address book)!
www2sms
http://olausson.de/maemo


I should mention, I am a biochemist, and well, I dare to say the only one - not 100% sure about that - from my semester who can seriously code (not perfect and 100% clean, but I archive want I want) ;-)

I love it when people can benefit from my code and thats why I am so much into the OpenSource community.

Cheers
Bjoern

I started programming BASIC at around 20 (1981) I think, after buying a Timex Sinclair 1000 and teaching myself from examples. Went on to Commodore 64, then C128, then hopped onto a school mainframe for COBOL, then a Tektronics Minicomputer to use BASIC for very primitive CAD work. The class was superseded the next semester by PCs running AutoCAD, so I saw the future and retook it-- which led to LISP, and Pascal, and DOS batch files, and Unix shell scripts, etc etc etc.

Fun stuff.

But yeah, in general I see a lack of motivation and curiosity in the youth around here. They want to consume, not to create. It's sadly true of my oldest son, stepson and their cousins/friends.

My youngest (almost 15) is the exception. he's scripting in garry's Mod and getting very good at it. He's also got the right mentality for professional programmer... which is good and bad.

Children, children, children. If you want to learn programming start by understanding how computers compute. I learned the basics on an IBM402 Accounting Machine. It didn't need no stinking OS - you told the data where to go with a plug board and patch cables. Then I graduated to assembler language on an IBM1401. You had to page program segments in and out of memory because there was only 1KB to work with.