Feh. In my day we stacked mud bricks into arrays. A meltdown meant someone hadn't fired that damn things thoroughly.

I am constantly told by people that I am lucky I know how to code etc, as if it was an innate ability I was born with. The next question is almost always, so how do I learn to code? My response is always the same. Get an IDE, get an SDK, get and idea - read a tonne of examples and go to it. Most people however don't REALLY want to code. REALLY wanting to code means hours and hours of frustration debugging code (I always say - writing code is easy, debugging code is hard). I liken debugging to writing the same word over and over and over, until you finally get it right - then get to write two words over and over. Then when you get a full page of words you discover you missed a comma at the start and have to write it again

The lack of willingness to do this I can only imagine stems from the same "I want everything on a silver platter handed to me" syndrome that the new generation seems to have. if it isnt instantaneous, its not worth doing, and that just doesn't lend itself to coding

Oh and Text - speaking as someone who made mud bricks for one summer, Even I wouldnt have the temperament for that kind of coding

Ah, but hiow many of you guys make your own clothes? huh?

not yet! but im thinking to start doing some!

i'm getting too old. i used to code pascal about 10-15 years ago. late 90's i was doing that for living but it wasn't my "thing" so i changed my goal to computer hardware and started to fix ppl's computers for money in same company and now... i cant even remember about nothing about pascal. damn!

it's not too late to start coding again but where i could get that time?? kids, family, work! if anyone could hardcode life to have couple extra hours in a day i would be grateful

My first programming was at age 13 in BASIC on a C 64. I started this stuff because as a kid I always wanted to write my own games. After having spend several years coding in BASIC, C, Pascal, Assembler, Perl, Tcl, and C++, it was only logical for me to study computer science. Did so and am now holding a master's degree (German diploma) in computer science. Python as a language put even more fun into coding, and Maemo is a great platform for coding.
Currently I don't do programming for a profession (besides shell and Perl scripting), as I'm doing Unix/Linux consulting at a big ISP right now. So I can enjoy coding opensource in my pastime.

Technically it's the same as programming isn't it?
Knitting and sewing has to have a syntax, too, so that you don't get a messy result with buggy holes.

I once sewed a button

But back to the topic, I think I started programming somewhere around the age of 14. I had read some C64 programming books before that but didn't really do anything serious.

I started with Pascal and transitioned to C from that. C++ came later and C# after that, and I've used both of those in work too.

Programming is a great hobby but not that great of a job.

I find it interesting none the less. My lecturers at university know how to program decently, yet they know absolutely nothing about how windows operates or any usability of it.

In high school I had a teacher and he had a whole history of IT background yet when it came to teaching year 10 students the basics of computer programs such as flash he was useless.

Now you get people who can use windows extensively and not program. Cha cha cha.

I think the point I was trying to make was that we have a huge range of skills, knowledge and experience. Branding people as "passive" - or "stupid" for that matter - because they don't have a skill or knowledge base you do is unhelpful. They have other skills, know other things.

Of course, one might put value judgements on which things are 'worth' knowing or being able to do (personally I'd consider a working knowledge of Shakespeare as superior to a knowledge of the current state of Brad and Angelina's marriage, for example) but there is almost always a situation where your knowledge is useless while the other person's is not.

hi together i also think that the thread title isnt right couse computer nerds like us where passive in there childhood and youth while the other kids played football (i mean soccer sry iam from germany and we play fußball.

Sure its fine to have these skills in our digital world. I allways say that its good to have one eye while the others are blind..

So my first "computer" was a kc87 *iam born in gdr* after the wall was down i was haveing a 128d comodore. But to take a real look at Programming (beside basic) i was need a lot more Time. This came with my interest for the Internet. From HTML to PHP a little Java, Python and so one. When i was at the University i learnd a lot about Databases too.

After my Master and some Jobs i work today as Admin in another University. I guess this is the Livecycle of a Computer Nerd *lol*