How did you start off?

[Kennydin]

What I would like to know is how some of you guys started out programming ? How did you get to where you are today knowledge wise? So did you learn a language and move on to something else using it etc? To give people ideas about how they should start off I would just like to know.
When some people come to a standstill it's nice to know how people who, like in this community, became as good as they are. We all know, or should know: It takes time to get where some of you people are, but explaining it to the lost little noob who wants to break into programming can be helpful. Especially to those future people who come across this site, this post is for you as well.
Currently I just would like to know some of your stories about how you got to where you are in slight detail.
I personally Im not lost (I have been sometimes (who hasn't)) but Im curious to know how people started out.

Kenny

[SpiritWebb]

I started off learning Qbasic when I was in middle school (8th grade), and then moved to Qbasic 4.5 (when I got to high school, 9th grade) when it had the compiler built in and could create .exe's. Then my mother bought me C/C++ 4.0 and it was a pain (I still own that version). I then tried my hand at Pascal 7.0 and got to the point of learning how to create a clickable button, and then I lost the software due to a hardware crash.

After that I stayed with Qbasic 4.5 for a while and then just quit. Took a breather, got married and had a daughter and I thought I would try making an animated movie using Anim8or, then found Blender 3D. Couldn't model all the best so hope was lost there and couldn't find the help. I noticed at that point Blender 3D had a game engine, and I thought, "what about an MMO?" So I did some searching and found halls site, and here I am.

Since I have joined, I have learned some in PHP, MySql, Flash MX 2004 (AS2), tiny bit of C++, some javascript...and here I am!! Hope I didn't miss anything.


Oh on another note: My daughter is 7 months today. Wow, how time flies.

[Sakar]

I got started with the scripting language in Realm Crafter, then moved on to trying to understand TorqueScript (have not figured it out to this day), then started messing with various other languages like PHP, C#, VisualBasic, Ruby, etc. And now I'm here (which isn't really anywhere TBH )

[MAruz]

I started with the interest of making my own web site 10 years or so ago. Didn't get far. Then I attended a media school a couple years later, which required me to learn HTML and some very simple CSS. Still couldn't get the hang of it. At this time I also started to play NWN, and got interested in the editor that followed that game, but definitely didn't get the hang of the scripting language there (which I think is prety close to C).

I started to take interest in film instead and took a 1 year course in film, but there they had a game design class too, which I attended. The teacher there owns 50% of a small game company, and I got the chance to work for her as an intern (doing game scripting and world building, editor stuff) for a full year. Crappy payment, but I was used to living on next to nothing as a student and also took a part-time job. Here I got some valuable game industry experience, I learned scripting, and have my name in the credit list of a published game (a game for kids).

This experience lead me to where I am now, studying for a bachelor degree in programming. Now I'm starting to get the hang of HTML, CSS, some JavaScript, Java, and last some PHP and MySQL which I learned from tutorials here on indie-resource.com.