We asked 7 of our developers how they ended up in programming. Can you guess their age just by their story?
We asked 7 of our developers how they ended up in programming. Can you guess their age just by their story?
“I was interested in computers in general since I was a kid. At the age of 10-11, my cousin gave me an old computer with a book of programming steps to do little things. At the age of 13 I had my first computer. I studied computer science and when I got out of college, the only job I could find was computer technician and network guy so I started with that but then web became a thing. When programming in web positions started to increase I jumped to that train as it seemed I really enjoyed programming. I never left programming since then”
He’s 35 years old
“I first got intrigued with coding at the age of 9 when I saw my sister and cousins using a social network called “Asian Avenue” which was essentially MySpace targeted towards asians. The website had input sections such as “About Me,” “My Interests,” etc. and they didn’t really have security because you were able to put HTML code in there when you were not supposed to be able to and so I started to put img tags and put random pictures of anime characters. That was the first time I coded and I kept trying different snippets from online to see what I could create. It fascinated me because I was able to create something visual with just text and I had complete control over everything. The interest continued in my last year of high school when we had a “Personal Project” that was a project meant to be done throughout the whole year. I chose to make a website because I was able to be creative in a different way. At the end of that project, I had a feeling of accomplishment because I had worked on everything by myself and started it from scratch. After that project, I applied to Computer Science at Dawson College.”
He’s 25 years old
“My interest in programming probably stems from an interest in how things work. As a kid, I would sometimes take apart old devices, like alarm clocks, to see what made them tick (pun intended). That, and a penchant for building things (I had mad Lego skills) naturally applied themselves to programming as computers became more popular. The problem solving, the creative aspect to writing code, the inner mechanics of how all the pieces fit together to make a workable application are all attributes that I can trace back to a young age.”
He’s 38 years old
“I have been using computer since my childhood because my dad was coding and playing a bit. I began to play video games and do some flash / html when I was 12, it was very hard because the lack of documentation in French and lack of internet to have it (50h/month 56k if you remember) but it was interesting to finally have results, big achievement. After that, when I was 14 I had a Counter Strike team (video games) back in 2006 and every team at that time had to have a website to show their results, their news, have a forum to discuss and to recruit new people etc.. The website was in PHP, using a CMS, and we needed to have some new features on it to have a better site than the others. So I began to dig into the code and spent nights on this to understand, modify, test etc.. All was in German, I had never seen serverside code before etc… in my head it was an adventure and I really wanted to understand to implement all the cool things we wanted.”
He’s 29 years old
“My programming history is complex. When I learned programming in school, I started from Pascal and Assembly language. I started as a web developer on Java and now I’m mainly on PHP.”
He’s 42 years old
“I started with very basic HTML/PHP development seeing that my friend got basic web development contracts. I originally studied Mechanical Engineering in university when I took a couple of mandatory C++ courses. One of the projects allowed students to complete an application of their choosing. I ultimately created a small baseball simulation using OpenGL. It was at that point that I decided to switch majors to Computer Science. After graduating, the same friend mentioned earlier said there was an opening for a junior PHP web developer where he worked. I have been in web development since.”
He’s 38 years old
“It wasn’t something I thought I would become when I was young, It was essentially luck that led me here. My father bought us a computer when I was a child (probably 7/8 years old). My brother who is older than me was basically the one who played and I watched him play. We played together (meaning he played and I watched) at some games, like Maniac Mansion, Indiana Jones and the last crusade, Monkey Island. Then a few years later he bought a new computer a we started to play Age of empire (my father also got another pc from work so we started to play together in lan). I’ve never been a huge gamer but I liked computers (don’t ask me why). After all that, what really got me into code was when I started to develop my own website (late 90’s style). It was a website about funny stuffs I could gather on the internet, like funny ads, song, pictures, nothing too elaborated.”
He’s 35 years old
How did you do with your guesses? If you think about it, the age range is so minimal in this industry because having a computer at home is still such an early development in our society. Hard concept to grasp considering how far we’ve come with technology. I mean, not only does every home have a computer now but there is also one in almost every pocket! I wonder what a quiz like this one would look in a decade or two…