Why did you start coding?

[Persona]

// Title says it all. 

 

What inspired you guys to start coding? I just started learning Python because I've always been interested in how the software that I use in my everyday life actually works. I really enjoy it so far (: 

[minus]

I did because I should, part of my curriculum.

[Quest]

 

// Title says it all. 

i c wat u did thur

Because my friends wanted a RuneScape private server and they for some reason deemed me as "smart enough".

That progressed into WoW servers, which I got an income off of and had to do web design for, then some small game coding for a company I did some sound design for.

[Jade]

It's handy. We're in a world where new, more effective and efficient software is demanded as the internet gets bigger and bigger with larger demands.

 

There is a high demand for programmers now - especially skilled ones. You could effectively set your own pay, considering many companies are desperate for good programmers and don't want to let them go. Why do you think Google, Amazon, Dropbox, Valve, and so on are so damn good to their employees?

[Builder]

I realized that gaming is a waste of time for the most part and that coding is much harder to learn than PC building.

 

Being a good PC builder is largely intuition with regards to cable management and such but beyond that it's just memorizing long lists of components. The memorization got boring for me, because I realized that it meant every PC manufactured was largely the same and even building my own was futile because at the end of the day it's just a list of letters and numbers on a sheet of paper.

 

For me, computers are more powerful than what they contain. Coding is about seeing the hardware as something more than those letters and numbers, it's about seeing it as a platform for revolutionizing social change and spreading knowledge to improve the collective human intellect. The PC market is commoditized, it's come to the point where there is no longer anything magical about computing. Everything is the same, and the specs are all that matters. The whole programming mentality is seeing that there's a dimension of computing beyond specs that turns computers into devices greater than the sum of the parts they contain.

[Darko_Nerivar]

I don't know. It's fun. It has this feeling, when you complete some challenging task. Enjoyment and jubilation all together.

 

And I just love machines. Electronics, mechanical machines, their hybrids - no difference. And programming is a way of conversation with them.

[rashdanml]

I wanted to learn how to develop Web applications, so I got a book on PHP. Had to take a C programming course in Uni as well, and since then, I've expanded on my programming knowledge through self-learning. 

[alpenwasser]

I realized that gaming is a waste of time for the most part and that coding is much harder to learn than PC building.

While I still really enjoy building a PC (well, at least ones where

I can do some modding and get creative, although in that case it

might be more apt to call it a "DYI project which just so happens

to contain some PC components), I can definitely empathize with the

gaming side of your statement. At some point I just got kinda bored

by gaming and realized that I was much more interested in coding.

I have definitely played some games which I really enjoyed and which

left a lasting impression on me (the original Deus Ex, for example),

and maybe some day I might get interested in gaming again, but for

the past few years or so, coding has had a much stronger draw for me.

It helps of course that I switched to Linux permanently about seven

years ago and gaming on that platform has been mostly a no-go, although

I do have a PS3, so I didn't stop completely right after the switch.

Anyway, as for why I actually like to code, I am honestly not absolutely

sure, I just do. Maybe it has to do with taking a problem apart, making

an algorithm for it, and then making the whole thing work. I love the

feeling when I run a piece of code and it does what I want it to do for

the first time, that's just awesome. But aside from liking it, it is

just an immensely useful skill to have, and will be ever more so in the

coming decades.

I'm pretty confident that even if I didn't enjoy it, I'd still strive

to acquire at least some halfway decent coding skills, because even if

you're not going to work as a programmer, as long as you work in a

technical career these days, coding is very often part of the basic

skillset required for the job in one form or another.

[Builder]

-snip-

You can only learn so much about hardware. At a certain point, it's easier to learn the rest about hardware if you just start coding. Eventually you can get back down to assembly, then once you've mastered that, you can start in on discrete logic, boolean algebra and the whole of electrical engineering. Once you've mastered all of that, well, let's just say you won't need our advice anymore

[alpenwasser]

You can only learn so much about hardware. At a certain point, it's easier to learn the rest about hardware if you just start coding. Eventually you can get back down to assembly, then once you've mastered that, you can start in on discrete logic, boolean algebra and the whole of electrical engineering. Once you've mastered all of that, well, let's just say you won't need our advice anymore

Had a class in digital electronics last year (studying to be an

electrical engineer at some point, my health permitting ),

which was indeed rather interesting.

Although we started out from the bottom up, not via programming

(which seems more like a top-down approach to me). Boolean logic

first, then logic gates, doing simple circuits and so on. Nothing

too complex yet at this point of course. Had a lab course using

an FPGA as a base, then implemented different circuits on that,

final assignment was to build a simple synthesizer and make it

play a few notes. 'Twas fun.

I find low-level hardware stuff immensely interesting, but of course

if you can't code, you can't really do anything with it, so that's

definitely among my motivations to learn to program. But naturally

for now I'm by far not yet knowledgeable enough to actually do

something useful on the hardware level. But maybe some day I'll

be an actual proper electrical engineer.

[Builder]

-snip-

My point was more that it's somewhat easier to look at the electronics from a higher level perspective, because once you know what all the opcodes do, you can analyze which parts of the circuit they activate, how memory works, etc.

 

Bottom-up works just as well if not better, but for people that don't know computers beyond GPU, CPU, and RAM it is in my opinion immensely more difficult to work up from the bottom. GPU, CPU, and RAM are really just abstractions for immensely complex circuits that accomplish amazing things, just like programming is an abstraction for immensely complex code that accomplishes amazing things.

[CyseroTheMage]

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

        <head>

             <title>Why did you start coding</title>

        </head>

        <body>

             <p style="font-size: 9001px">It's a basic skillset for people interested in computers in general. </p>

        </body>

</html

[rockking1379]

my mom went to school and showed me what she was doing with HTML. it got my interest so i kinda dinked around with it. then got to high school and they offered an intro to C++ class. took it and been programming more ever since.

[Nuluvius]

I started 'coding' to change my life, my story is like this:

 

After a very unhappy blue collar career and early life I decided to return to education. I had originally intended to go into something along the Physics route. However possessing no formal qualifications what so ever and having failed all of my GCSEs earlier in life, I had to select from a range of Access courses close by. For those that don't know, an Access course is essentially an HND specifically tailored to get adults back into education. It's roughly equivalent to a number of A Levels and lasts one year full time study. At the time they were introduced they were intended to be a kind of power pack to get adults the prerequisites required for degree entry.

 

Living in the middle of nowhere at the time the choices available were indeed sparse. Moreover I simply lacked the confidence that I'd even be successful at academia in order to make the decision to move away. One of the more promising choices available was an Access to Computing HND. Well I already knew that I enjoyed hardware a great deal so I decided to enrol to see how I would fair.

 

It was indeed a very changing experience! I began terrified and anxious suffering flashbacks of the things that were done to me in school. I kept to myself, I didn't look at or speak to anyone other than the lecturers and sat alone at the far rear of the classes. However once the first couple of waves of assignments had been turned around it was quickly apparent that I was pulling far ahead. A short while later I had quite a following. People would sit near me, talk to me, encourage me and ask for help and advice constantly. I'd reached the top and I couldn't believe it. When I graduated it was with a record grade for the College and the confirmation that this was the correct path for me.

 

Later I moved across the country and enrolled on my BSc Software Engineering degree and discovered programming & software architecture in it's purer form. I'd already made the decision at this point that I was defiantly not destined for a working class life. But after encountering that, it ignited something inside me, a desire for more, a hunger for knowledge, perfection and power that was all consuming. Once again I excelled in that area and graduated with exceptional grades and some very good friends.

 

Through obsession over detail plus pursuit of new horizons I gained much confidence and anger over the past. Compounded into a drive that denied failure even in the face of being diagnosed with both severe forms of Dyslexia and Dyscalculia got me to where I am now: A rapid ascent from working for a tiny 3 person business to a well respected position in an enormous multinational corporation. Plus much demand for freelancing and consulting as well as a rich family life!

 

LONG gone are the day where I lift washing machines and fridge freezers up flights of stairs, wasting my life and busting my back for frigging ££ digit a day peanuts!

 

There is much beauty to be beheld in the well engineered architecture of software forged by passion and love for the detail and intricacies existing in each of the different languages. I see this as art, as the quintessence of perfection and a testament to our denial as a race of the prevailing force of entropy in our universe. I am and always will be grateful to the digital age for giving me a purpose in this life.

[Silver_]

I started because of Roblox. _{sorry it was lame i know}

 

but then after quitting that game I decided to learn some other programming languages, that was about 5 or 6 years ago.

[Midnight]

for funsies. Now, it's a little more serious than that.

[yozo67]

Because I wanted to be one of the cool kids /s

 

I wanted to have something professional people could look at, as young as I am. And it kind of grew from there, and now I'm proficient in web design/dev; but I'm still learning to this day.

[SnowGhost1212]

My mother worked as a software engineer, living with her as I grew up inspired me to learn programming.

[ThreePinkApples]

It seemed like fun, and like a natural development of my education. So I took the education path that fitted my "needs" the best (not moving to far away, cheap living and some course that could learn me coding), so I ended up at an university and are in my last year om Computer Engineering (Don't want to be an engineer, just here for the coding )

[gastew15]

Well what got me into programming all started back when I was pretty young(8 or something like that) and my Step Father owned a tractor trailer repair shop. In the break room there was a pretty run of the mill computer for the time running XP which at the time was a few years old, but Vista had yet to come out. While my brother & sister played pinball or used paint I became entranced by playing around in Command Prompt and learning all the commands and all the cool tings I could do, so after awhile to no surprise I found I could make Batch files tat could do all the neat things I made by it's self! Then if you fast forward a few years of beating down stupid kids who just learned a command to shutdown a computer or something and completely running their day, I started to realize that there were way more things that I could do after using the internet at my grandparents house and finding this cool website called YouTube(In 2007 or so I had yet to have Internet access at my house or cable for that matter). I don't remember wo it was, but I found this Swedish guy who couldn't speak Enhlish for crap, but he was programming in this language called Java, and at the time I thought he was the coolest damn guy ever. After that I slowly started to learn and mess around in Java and along the way I found out about HTML(CSS would be found out about quite a while latter sadly, so everything was god awful..). Then for quite a few years it was just me playing around really. The in 2010 I found out about this awesome game being made in Java called Mine craft, made by another Swedish guy, only this time it being Notch of course(Oh yea, I tink we finally got an internet connection in late 2008 or early 2009, sad I know right?). Needless to say I fell in love with the game and played it a ton, which led me to really was my first dive into the internet and checking out forums and other stuff around. Really the rest of my programming followed Minecraft from that point and Modloader came out and other neat stuff so I started making crappy mods ad stuff like that. Besides some crappy classes in school that basically taught nothing that I didn't know already, plus some typing and Excel crap(Which I still never use..) I did everything on my own until really last year. Last year I found a programming course at my Local Career Center which really has changed my life forever. Not only did start learning even more about Java, but also I learned all about C# and became certified with some Microsoft Certs in it, took my knowledge from my Hardware obsession to get a few gneral IT and hardware Certs, competing in programming competions in the Regional, State, and even the National level, and wile all of tat was going on I also became the Lead Programmer at my High School for our First Robotics team. Really it stated off as a slow love of fun things to do on computers into a fast paced kick start into what I love.

[ZeferiniX]

Well, seeing lines of numbers and characters with some maths turned into something colorful and useful for other people me inspired to code. And the thing is, it's fun!

[AustinB]

It seemed cool to be able to do some voodoo magic and make something do something for you. I like automating things... Its cool and fun... Something to brag about(sometimes) and it improves your typing speed IMO.

[CyberBro]

Started after I left high shcool because I had an interested in computers and how they worked and thought it would be some I would like to do in the future.
Never really thought I would go any where with it necessarily but now I am going into my final year of my bachelor's degree in Computer Science

[Hazy125]

HTML wasn't cutting it, needed to know  PHP. Then decided to look into other languages after that. Still can't use much other than PHP for shit, but I can just about make a calculator in most languages