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I became a software engineer a little later than most of you, probably. I started out as a hardware technician back in the '70s after a 6 year stint in the Army but had a serious interest in the software side of things. Especially since I could see that I wouldn't be "fixing" computers too much longer as everything started to become more modularized. All I was was a highly trained "board swapper" at the end.
So, in 1980 I made the big jump to becoming a programmer. My first job was as a hardware diagnostics developer. A natural beginning for someone who was hardware-centric for over a decade. I gradually moved to being a firmware developer (another natural progression) until the late '90s when I made the jump to more business-related programming, which I am still doing today.
Along the way I migrated from assembler to Clipper for dBase to C to HTML to Classic ASP to VB6 to .NET VB and C#. So I'm basically a jack of all trades (and master of most!!)
And with the data side of things, from dBase II to Microsoft Access to SQL Server and Oracle.
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on Atari Basic, with 5.25" floppy disk, Atari 2600 console.
using the "Atari User Manual", howww...along time ago!, I was like 11.great days!!!!!    
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12 in QuickBASIC
14 Turbo c++
CPallini wrote: You cannot argue with agile people so just take the extreme approach and shoot him.
:Smile:
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I was 15 when I wrote my first programs on a ZX-Spectrum 48K. Using that one-key command language it featured.
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17. Fortran on punch cards submitted to an IBM 360/50 in 1974. That's all it took and I was hooked for life.
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First "line" of code - 1975 - using Microsoft basic, loaded onto an IMSAI by paper tape.
First "code" - punched an IBM card to write code for a Wang Nixie Tube calculator - 1969.
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16. I used BASIC and FORTRAN II, which should give you an idea how long ago that was.
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About 14 (mid '70s). I think it was a PDP-11, used a 300 baud modem to connect with it as it was in the school district's admin office. Used thermal paper output. We must have wasted the equivalent of reams of paper writing and playing our Star Trek program in BASIC!! Looked at it few years later in college, what a mass of spaghetti code!!
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7 ish BBC Microcomputer
1984
type 'old' then 'list' after hitting the break key during a game and then randomly changing lines of code to see what happened. This progressed into changing in game messages to say rude stuff.
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14, 1970, Fortran IV, punchcards (if you don't count the "Minivac" 3 years before, but that wasn't code, it was wires and diodes and resistors and blinking lights). We had to write a program to sort three numbers from lowest to highest. I was hooked.
But the fun really began when I learned that a crash wasn't fatal, and that nobody outside the room (teacher) would ever know.
Crash machine, freak out classmates, reset.
Cool.
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For Christmas '83, my parents got us a TI-99/4a. I had just turned 17. While my brother was only fascinated with the games, I was more curious about the blue screen with the prompt. My first program in Basic simply accepted two numbers as input and displayed their sum. It wasn't long before I discovered how to make the screen change colors, and generate sound. What fun! By New Years, I had a program that played the opening bars of the 'Star Spangled Banner' with the screen flashing red, white, and cyan.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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I was 13 or 14 years old, back in 86 when I discovered LOGO in a technical magazine. And for the first 3 years, I learned programming and wrote programs on ... notebooks  The lightest and most portable ones, totally "green", and made entirely from ... paper[^]. The turtle did really amazing things ... in the virtual machine from my mind.
(I didn't got access to a real computer at that time  )
Then, two years later I discovered a local computers club and joined it. When I went there, the teacher asked me: "Have you ever worked on a computer? Do you know anything about any programming language?" and I answered proudly "I know LOGO!" In that moment all the faces turned amazed to me, and the teacher told me "Well, it's time to give up to childish things and start learning a real language: BASIC" and he pulled me gently in front of the first computer I ever saw: HC 85 [^]
(If anyone is missing it's tape sound, you can hear it back here [^])
And one of the very first programs I wrote was a ... 3D graphics app, representing wireframe objects define through vertexes. I'll never forget the Bresenham's line algorithm[^] and Bézier curve[^]. AutoDesk, watch your back! I'm coming !!!
Great times
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I was 6 years old on a Sinclair ZX81 Basic.
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17, which is NBD (no big deal), but I'd just turned 17 back in the summer of 1968 between my junior and senior year in HS. Taking "introduction to engineering nsf" classes at OSU. FORTRAN with 029 punch-card with IBM 7090 main-frame, iirc. One job-card a day.
"You kids have it sooooo easy."
Went from being a "wrench" day-dreaming about Corvettes and Z/28's and figuring to eventually work in Detroit, to absolutely gob-smacked by these new-fangled computers. A life changing experience.
TMI? ... I can recall my at-the-time GF experiencing MEGO (my eyes glaze over) while I explained ... in detail ... how a software program to find "perfect right-angle integer triangles" worked. That was pretty much the end of that. Sigh.
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12 years old in 1979 on an Atari 400, if you can believe that. Not even a 5.25-inch diskette - It was a BASIC cartridge! A few years ago I tracked down an old Atari 400 on eBay that I now display proudly in my office...
Isn't it funny how most of us started programming around puberty? Explains so much about my love life!!
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I was around 7 years old with a Timex Synclair. From their to a kaypro and a TRS-80 CoCo 2.
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15, using Fortran. Assembler quickly followed. I was working at a summer job. This led to a full-time job.
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Age 14, in 1980 or so. Wrote my own game programs in BASIC on the junior high school's lone computer: a Radio Shack TRS-80 -- with audio cassette storage!
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I was 17, but this was in 1962. Well before the existence of personal computers.
Fletcher Glenn
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10 or so, GWBASIC!
10 CLS
20 PRINT "hi John"
'how care about the world :P
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15, which isn't the youngest I see here, but then it was in 1973. We had access to the LA City Schools HP 3000C and were locked into the Basic interpreter. Connected to it through an ASR-33 teletype via modem @ 100Baud. Programs were kept on paper tape, because we had no way to store files and we had a spare TTY to create tapes on.
Aside from various class programs I wrote a version of the Star Trek game, plus we had a version of Life we kept trying to improve on.
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18.
My job was basically data entry but within 6 months I'd automated my job with VBA and Python and also learned C++, VB.NET and C#. Got a raise and a bonus. I've never enjoyed anything as much as I enjoy programming.
I'm only 19 now, so a long road ahead of me.
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13 y.o. in 1969. Programmed a H-P 9100 using magnetic cards. Little did I know...
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I was ten. My father had switched professions was working on IBM 360/ RCA Spectra 70 FORTRAN.
I took a programmed learning course on FORTRAN and helped my dad debug his programs.
My mother became a keypunch operator when we moved to Oregon so my favorite past time was the whole family, after hours, went to where Mom and Dad worked. My brother and I would write cards and play with the logic breadboards.
I may not have accomplished much at 10, but fast forward 50 years and I am still writing Windows programs.
Whee!
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