Ask HN: How did your passion for computer stuff start?
37 comments
My fascination with computers started when I watched the movie Hackers (1995) [1]. I just liked the idea of the underdogs upping the ante over their well-funded bureaucrats and being smart and stubborn. Even though this was rather a bland movie (by today's standards), I appreciate the fact that this movie pushed me into the realms of software and computers in general.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/
Hackers was one of the two movies that got me into development. The other was Antitrust (2001) [1]. I ended up taking AP Computer Programming in high school that year (back when it was C++) and had dreams of going to UIUC and starting a startup in the garage with my good friend.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/
I fell in love with computers under serendipitous circumstances -- I was pretty lucky that I went to the only hackathon near me in my freshman year of high school. I ended up loving it so much (I made a meme generator at the event) that I wanted to create a hands-on coding club at my school, which only continued to fuel my love for code as I found a community of young coders when I started my school's chapter of Hack Club. After the club began, my peers at my school and I finally felt like we had a group of students excited about code and its impact, leading us to create many coding initiatives in our relatively under-served community.
After us, 3 other Hack Clubs popped up, and it's been magical to see them hosting school hackathons and summer camps. I really hope that this continues so we can show more students what pushed us into the wild coding world!
After us, 3 other Hack Clubs popped up, and it's been magical to see them hosting school hackathons and summer camps. I really hope that this continues so we can show more students what pushed us into the wild coding world!
The local arcade got a Pong machine, then later, a Lunar Lander, and many others as they came out.
I went from playing pinball, to video games, and fell in love with it all. In about the 7th grade I started to design my own games, working out how they'd play and the layout of screens ( on graph paper...lol ) etc...
Later I earned enough cash to get an Apple II+ with all the programming manuals it came with, and spent most of my highschool nights recreating games I'd played and designing new ones in Basic and then eventually 6502 assembly.
Without money for college, I spent my 20's working odd jobs and continued to program on the side. Eventually I got my foot in the door at a national news paper's budding computer department, writing help files and documenting all the existing systems... and worked my way into web development from there.
I went from playing pinball, to video games, and fell in love with it all. In about the 7th grade I started to design my own games, working out how they'd play and the layout of screens ( on graph paper...lol ) etc...
Later I earned enough cash to get an Apple II+ with all the programming manuals it came with, and spent most of my highschool nights recreating games I'd played and designing new ones in Basic and then eventually 6502 assembly.
Without money for college, I spent my 20's working odd jobs and continued to program on the side. Eventually I got my foot in the door at a national news paper's budding computer department, writing help files and documenting all the existing systems... and worked my way into web development from there.
I grew up poor and didn't want to spend my adult life that way. So I got my hands on a used computer and some tools, and learned to code.
I'm only in it for the money.
I'm only in it for the money.
Didn't grow up poor, still in it for the money. Every other benefit that comes with it ( highly flexible workibg hours, intelectually teasing tasks) are just bonuses on top.
Can't remember I ever wrote a line of code that hasn't been paid for (except whilst studying)
The one thing that pushed me to follow this path was a joy for pc gaming, an enthusiastic teacher and income per profession rankings showing that computer science pays quite well.
The one thing that pushed me to follow this path was a joy for pc gaming, an enthusiastic teacher and income per profession rankings showing that computer science pays quite well.
Playing moon landing on an old TI programmable calculator[1].
From there I used to travel into the Computing Teaching Centre in Oxford University on weekends to write BASIC on a CTL Modular One[2]. I had no idea of the significance at the time but I met Tony Hoare[3] there on numerous occasions. It was a friend who got us in, I think he just knocked on the door and said can we play with your computers and remarkably they said yes. I was 14 or 15 at the time.
The first computer I owned was an Acorn System 1[4], 1KB RAM, 512 bytes ROM and a 7 segment calculator display. I had to work through the summer holidays picking fruit to pay for it. I spent countless hours hand assembling code for it, I think the biggest project I did was a Forth like language.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-57 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Technology_Limited#Th... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_System_1
From there I used to travel into the Computing Teaching Centre in Oxford University on weekends to write BASIC on a CTL Modular One[2]. I had no idea of the significance at the time but I met Tony Hoare[3] there on numerous occasions. It was a friend who got us in, I think he just knocked on the door and said can we play with your computers and remarkably they said yes. I was 14 or 15 at the time.
The first computer I owned was an Acorn System 1[4], 1KB RAM, 512 bytes ROM and a 7 segment calculator display. I had to work through the summer holidays picking fruit to pay for it. I spent countless hours hand assembling code for it, I think the biggest project I did was a Forth like language.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-57 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Technology_Limited#Th... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_System_1
A guy took control on my computer when I was 12. He opened a Matrix-stylized chat window (black background, green font color) and started to talk with me. He told me I had a trojan and than I should clean my computer. Then he restarted my computer to show me what he could do.
After this event, I learnt how to clean and tweak Windows. I started searching and comparing programs. I installed Firefox, adblock, an antivirus and a firewall, etc. I remember also asking my parents if I could open the computer to see how it works. It's also the period I started to spend a lot of time on forums. I discovered MMORPGs. Then I built my own gaming computer and made a basic website about the game I was playing.
After this event, I learnt how to clean and tweak Windows. I started searching and comparing programs. I installed Firefox, adblock, an antivirus and a firewall, etc. I remember also asking my parents if I could open the computer to see how it works. It's also the period I started to spend a lot of time on forums. I discovered MMORPGs. Then I built my own gaming computer and made a basic website about the game I was playing.
When I originally went to university, I went for music because I thought it was fun.
However, I was terrible at my music classes because I didn't enjoy many of them. Theory, conducting, and just doing scales all day. At some point I was determined to turn things around, and I decided to build an excel spreadsheet to help figure out what I needed to make in order to bring my grades up.
This was when I discovered VBA for excel. I had never programmed before, but I thought it was such a fun challenge. So I ended up making this over-engineered gradebook for my classes... At the end of the semester my grades were awful, but I changed schools, got my GPA back up, and changed my major to CS.
However, I was terrible at my music classes because I didn't enjoy many of them. Theory, conducting, and just doing scales all day. At some point I was determined to turn things around, and I decided to build an excel spreadsheet to help figure out what I needed to make in order to bring my grades up.
This was when I discovered VBA for excel. I had never programmed before, but I thought it was such a fun challenge. So I ended up making this over-engineered gradebook for my classes... At the end of the semester my grades were awful, but I changed schools, got my GPA back up, and changed my major to CS.
Grade school. I learned that computers followed rules. And if you learned the rules, you could make it do interesting things.
My classroom was the first class in the school to get a computer. At the time, nobody knew how to work the things, so instead of rotating around all of the different classrooms each week, it was left in our room for half of the year.
During that time, I got to use it a lot and became more fluent on it than the teacher. Eventually, a local news crew came to do a story on this rollout of computers in the classroom, and I got to be on local TV showing the reporter how to do stuff on this 'new technology'.
I learned that not everyone 'got' computers like I did.
My classroom was the first class in the school to get a computer. At the time, nobody knew how to work the things, so instead of rotating around all of the different classrooms each week, it was left in our room for half of the year.
During that time, I got to use it a lot and became more fluent on it than the teacher. Eventually, a local news crew came to do a story on this rollout of computers in the classroom, and I got to be on local TV showing the reporter how to do stuff on this 'new technology'.
I learned that not everyone 'got' computers like I did.
I've been coding since I was about 10, though not well. It was more messing around with computers and playing video games. I think I was mostly interested once I discovered all the things computers could do - but I didn't know how to do them.
Around the time I was looking to get serious about coding, my friend mentioned he attended a sort of code club. I was immediately curious and looked it up. It turned out to be run together with Hack Club[0], an organization helping kids run computer science clubs internationally. Unfortunately, I didn't go to his high school (and there wasn't one at mine) so I was unable to attend his coding club. However, I could still join the Hack Club Slack[1] where I've been helped by many (and have begun to help others).
I'm looking forward to starting a Hack Club at my high school this upcoming school year, and hope many more can have the experience I had, sooner. I don't work for Hack Club but can personally recommend them.
[0]: https://hackclub.com
[1]: https://slack.hackclub.com
Around the time I was looking to get serious about coding, my friend mentioned he attended a sort of code club. I was immediately curious and looked it up. It turned out to be run together with Hack Club[0], an organization helping kids run computer science clubs internationally. Unfortunately, I didn't go to his high school (and there wasn't one at mine) so I was unable to attend his coding club. However, I could still join the Hack Club Slack[1] where I've been helped by many (and have begun to help others).
I'm looking forward to starting a Hack Club at my high school this upcoming school year, and hope many more can have the experience I had, sooner. I don't work for Hack Club but can personally recommend them.
[0]: https://hackclub.com
[1]: https://slack.hackclub.com
I was always into "computer stuff", but nothing serious where I could earn any money (gaming > programming). So the programming part, where I ended up in the end as software developer, took off very late for me.
I studied computer science, but didn't really know why I did it. I learned about all this programming syntax, solving smaller problems, but it was always difficult for me grasping the bigger picture. But there was one seminar for half a year which open my eyes: Distributed Systems. Suddenly the bigger picture, having webservices, IOT or mobile devices, made so much more sense to me. Everything is connected with an API and not till then the acronym made sense for me. After the seminar I saw this huge potential in programming, because everything could be connected. That's when I started to develop serious interest in programming. If you are interested about it , you can read the whole story over [here](https://www.robinwieruch.de/what-is-an-api-javascript/).
I studied computer science, but didn't really know why I did it. I learned about all this programming syntax, solving smaller problems, but it was always difficult for me grasping the bigger picture. But there was one seminar for half a year which open my eyes: Distributed Systems. Suddenly the bigger picture, having webservices, IOT or mobile devices, made so much more sense to me. Everything is connected with an API and not till then the acronym made sense for me. After the seminar I saw this huge potential in programming, because everything could be connected. That's when I started to develop serious interest in programming. If you are interested about it , you can read the whole story over [here](https://www.robinwieruch.de/what-is-an-api-javascript/).
I don't think I have a passion for "computer stuff", but I really enjoy the craft of programming (and related application design and experience design and general hacky problem solving).
When I was a kid, home computers were barely a thing. We had one, but I only played with it. I thought maybe I'd grow up to be an architect. I took a few programming classes in middle school (logo and basic), but I started messing around with web pages in high school in the late 90's--mostly for publishing, since I liked to write and draw. JavaScript code was relatively small and rarely obfuscated then, so I learned a lot by reading the source of pages with cool layouts or effects. Haven't stopped since then.
Turns out there's a whole field where you can design things to solve problems or create experiences and make them come into being just by thinking about them carefully (and writing down your thoughts). The feedback loop for satisfaction and learning is very tight compared to architecture.
When I was a kid, home computers were barely a thing. We had one, but I only played with it. I thought maybe I'd grow up to be an architect. I took a few programming classes in middle school (logo and basic), but I started messing around with web pages in high school in the late 90's--mostly for publishing, since I liked to write and draw. JavaScript code was relatively small and rarely obfuscated then, so I learned a lot by reading the source of pages with cool layouts or effects. Haven't stopped since then.
Turns out there's a whole field where you can design things to solve problems or create experiences and make them come into being just by thinking about them carefully (and writing down your thoughts). The feedback loop for satisfaction and learning is very tight compared to architecture.
I was 5.
My dad was really into electronics and got a Windows 95 for home use. He insisted that my sister and I learn how to type.
He also made the fatal mistake of sharing the MechWarrior 2 and MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries CDs that came with our computer with me. I popped them in and got hooked. So I learned how to type, but I also developed a huge love for video games.
Basically, the rest of my childhood was spent thwarting the various ways my parents devised to try and lock me out of using the Internet/playing games. The more my parents tried to keep me off the computer, the more I wanted to be on.
My fascination with video games also made it so I wanted to learn to program. I learned some basic control flows in C++ at 13. Never really went much past that, because I started working in technical theatre and lighting, and spent more of my time programming lights and setting up lighting networks.
Picked it back up again in college, when I started taking game development classes and having to build stuff in Unity and GameMaker.
My dad was really into electronics and got a Windows 95 for home use. He insisted that my sister and I learn how to type.
He also made the fatal mistake of sharing the MechWarrior 2 and MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries CDs that came with our computer with me. I popped them in and got hooked. So I learned how to type, but I also developed a huge love for video games.
Basically, the rest of my childhood was spent thwarting the various ways my parents devised to try and lock me out of using the Internet/playing games. The more my parents tried to keep me off the computer, the more I wanted to be on.
My fascination with video games also made it so I wanted to learn to program. I learned some basic control flows in C++ at 13. Never really went much past that, because I started working in technical theatre and lighting, and spent more of my time programming lights and setting up lighting networks.
Picked it back up again in college, when I started taking game development classes and having to build stuff in Unity and GameMaker.
It started with the C64: Games and the ability to quickly create something of your own with BASIC.
Interestingly, with the web it was quite similar: "View > Page Source" and the ability to quickly learn and create something yourself really fascinated me about the web. Accessibility in my opinion was one of the key aspects that really made the web take off.
Interestingly, with the web it was quite similar: "View > Page Source" and the ability to quickly learn and create something yourself really fascinated me about the web. Accessibility in my opinion was one of the key aspects that really made the web take off.
My uncle was the computer guy of the family. I remember playing on his Amstrad 1640 when I was very young. I always wanted a home computer desperately but my dad never had an interest or saw it useful to encourage my passion for it. It wasn't until my uncle eventually upgraded from his 8086/640KB Amstrad to a Pentium 60 then he gave me the old Amstrad and I was hooked. This was probably about 96/97 so this was already vintage hardware and my attempts to run anything contemporary was frustrating, but that didn't stop me trying to squeeze out every drop of performance from the old beast. I had it for many years and eventually my experiments in trying to get more out of it broke it and it went to the tip. I could probably have repaired it easily just a few years later but I guess that's the tragedy of youth. I'm tempted to buy another 1640 to remember those days but I know it would never be the same.
My parents moved house when I was around 11. I suspect as a result of the recent house-purchase my parents basically bought one christmas present for my two sisters and myself: A 48k ZX Spectrum home computer.
The computer came with ~10 casette-tapes, a casette-player for loading them, and the computer itself. Unfortunately the casette-player we received in our bundle was broken. Which meant that we couldn't load any games.
So I read the manual instead, and experimented with programming in BASIC. A week later, or so, (all the shops being closed around Christmas time in the UK back then), we had a working system. My sisters played games, and while I did too I was hooked on programming.
A few more details here:
https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html
The computer came with ~10 casette-tapes, a casette-player for loading them, and the computer itself. Unfortunately the casette-player we received in our bundle was broken. Which meant that we couldn't load any games.
So I read the manual instead, and experimented with programming in BASIC. A week later, or so, (all the shops being closed around Christmas time in the UK back then), we had a working system. My sisters played games, and while I did too I was hooked on programming.
A few more details here:
https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html
My dad got us a TRS-80 from Radio Shack. We used out TV as a monitor. I remember typing in games in Basic, and then saving them to an audio casette so we could load them up again later.
That was my first taste of a computer, and of programming. And I've loved both ever since.
That was my first taste of a computer, and of programming. And I've loved both ever since.
I must have been 6 or 7 with Windows 95 at home and I double-clicked that mysterious black and orange hazard icon on my dad's desktop. Duke Nukem proceeded to captivate me, then I blinked, and now I'm over 30.
Same here, it started when I found Duke Nukem's Penthouse Paradise and Leisure Suit Larry 6 on my dads PC.
The amount of money I could make not doing computer stuff was quickly eclipsed by the amount of money I make doing computer stuff.
Wrote a post about this awhile back, easier to just link to it instead of copy + paste :)
https://esheavyindustries.com/2017/01/i-owe-my-career-to-bei...
https://esheavyindustries.com/2017/01/i-owe-my-career-to-bei...
The birth of my daughter combined with an affinity for HTML/CSS and website creation combined with a realization that what I was originally setting out to do in life (music) just wasn't going to work the way I had anticipated.
I'm really glad it worked out the way it did. I enjoy this a lot more than I ever could have thought.
I'm really glad it worked out the way it did. I enjoy this a lot more than I ever could have thought.
Well, I had a grandfather who owned a print shop and had an extra computer. He gave it to my family when I was 9 and then I discovered Runescape and have been hooked on computers ever since. My first real foray into programming was through making mods for a game called Toribash.
I was interested when I got my first computer for sure, but when I got my first modem I was hooked.
Oregon trail on an apple 2 in kindergarten.
Then taking apart my parent's IBM work computer to see how it worked, mostly got it back together..
Found a book on basic in the library around age 8 and was hooked.
Then taking apart my parent's IBM work computer to see how it worked, mostly got it back together..
Found a book on basic in the library around age 8 and was hooked.
Myspace in middle school. Looking at the themes and editing them turned into creating my own own one-page website. It showed me the complete control you can have with a computer.
I had computers in the house since I was born, as my dad was a software engineer. I started programming in QBASIC, trying to make games.
in the 80s a friend dragged me into a department store where they sold PCs. He typed into one "10 Print Hello; 20 Goto 10" and pressed return. What I saw on the screen seemed like magic to me and I got hooked since then. Later got my own VC20 and spent most of my time with that piece.
Writing simple programs was a blast. Then I learned they could be simply interfaced to external circuits.
I've always been the kid who was into technical stuff. Before I was in elementary school, I would insist that my dad let me help put together my Hot Wheels tracks and such. On a rainy day when I was 8, I had locked myself in my room to avoid my family, and I was lucky to have a computer to myself there. I turned my focus for that day towards it, and I wondered how it worked, so I googled "How to code". The first result that came up at the time (circa 2006) was https://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/c-tutorial.html, and an hour or two later, I had learned the basics of my first programming language.
I didn't really care that much about computers at the time, though. Over the years, I became a power user of Windows, iOS, and macOS, but I was way more into sports, particularly baseball. After a while, though, I became the fat kid that all the pitchers liked to hit, and when the pitchers started learning to throw 80 MPH fastballs in early high school, I decided I needed a new hobby. That's when I started getting serious about understanding code and becoming a developer.
I bounced around free tutorial after tutorial online, and I ended up with a solid understanding of how to make a static website. I saw a few ads between YouTube videos for a more cohesive online coding school called Treehouse, and they were running a promotion at the time where if you bought one of their pro subscriptions, they'd give one for a year for free to a public high school student. I thought to myself, "Hey, I'm a public high school student. I wonder how I can get on the receiving end of that?", and so after some googling, I found their CEO's email address, and asked him. He got me set up with that, and I've been hooked ever since. I taught myself everything from the web front-end to scripting languages like Python to mobile development. Nowadays I'm a moderator on their community forums, supporting myself as a freelance iOS/web developer.
In high school, I was also really into the technical clubs I had available to me. I went for the majority of my Junior year to a high school in suburban Philadelphia, where I joined the robotics club, which got pretty much all my attention and passion while I was there. There was also a computer science club there, too, which was part of the Hack Club family of high school coding clubs. I loved that club, too. It was a great time to stop worrying about the stresses of they day/week before, and just sit back and work and learn about code with other people who're into it. I enjoyed it so much that when I went back to my former high school in suburban Nashville for my Senior year, I started another Hack Club there, too. Since then, I've pretty well known what my life's passion is, and now I'm trying to use it to start a career.
Treehouse: https://teamtreehouse.com Hack Club: https://hackclub.com My website: https://hulet.tech
I didn't really care that much about computers at the time, though. Over the years, I became a power user of Windows, iOS, and macOS, but I was way more into sports, particularly baseball. After a while, though, I became the fat kid that all the pitchers liked to hit, and when the pitchers started learning to throw 80 MPH fastballs in early high school, I decided I needed a new hobby. That's when I started getting serious about understanding code and becoming a developer.
I bounced around free tutorial after tutorial online, and I ended up with a solid understanding of how to make a static website. I saw a few ads between YouTube videos for a more cohesive online coding school called Treehouse, and they were running a promotion at the time where if you bought one of their pro subscriptions, they'd give one for a year for free to a public high school student. I thought to myself, "Hey, I'm a public high school student. I wonder how I can get on the receiving end of that?", and so after some googling, I found their CEO's email address, and asked him. He got me set up with that, and I've been hooked ever since. I taught myself everything from the web front-end to scripting languages like Python to mobile development. Nowadays I'm a moderator on their community forums, supporting myself as a freelance iOS/web developer.
In high school, I was also really into the technical clubs I had available to me. I went for the majority of my Junior year to a high school in suburban Philadelphia, where I joined the robotics club, which got pretty much all my attention and passion while I was there. There was also a computer science club there, too, which was part of the Hack Club family of high school coding clubs. I loved that club, too. It was a great time to stop worrying about the stresses of they day/week before, and just sit back and work and learn about code with other people who're into it. I enjoyed it so much that when I went back to my former high school in suburban Nashville for my Senior year, I started another Hack Club there, too. Since then, I've pretty well known what my life's passion is, and now I'm trying to use it to start a career.
Treehouse: https://teamtreehouse.com Hack Club: https://hackclub.com My website: https://hulet.tech
Oh boy, treehouse... I did most of my girlfriend's treehouse training for her new job, the parts that weren't on google word-for-word. She's something of a legend at her company for finishing those CSS snd JavaScript modules so fast.
Games
It's the gateway drug. Gaming (at least used to) gets you into save-file editing, then into modding, then into programming.
Not to mention all the general IT fiddle-frigging that was involved in making games run, or fixing your PC after something went disastrously wrong with that, and you needed to get it back in a working state before the parents noticed that you'd broken the computer...
Not to mention all the general IT fiddle-frigging that was involved in making games run, or fixing your PC after something went disastrously wrong with that, and you needed to get it back in a working state before the parents noticed that you'd broken the computer...
Yes, all of that, but particulairly because I want(ed) to make my own game(s). I actually took a detour via 3D modelling (Blender) for gaming and then becoming interested in writing my own Python scripts, so I learned how to code and forgot all about my original aspirations with Blender.
<script>alert(1);</script>
When we finally got there and installed it, it ran at about 2 frames per second. My friend didn't let it phase him. He played it in slow motion for weeks in my attic. Shoot. Wait. Wait. Missed. Shoot again. Wait Wait...
I couldn't take it, and eventually learned about autoexec.exe & config.sys, about the different types of memory etc. Trying to get games like this to run.
Even from the outset its been a battle of hate & love :P