Your high school experience | Hacker News Reader

Your high school experience

From what I've read high school seems to be a key period in the development and life of a hacker. I'd like to know any experiences you had during high school (and college?) that made you interested in computers and technology et cetera.

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I became a programmer in spite of high school. I had started programming a bit around seventh grade, due in part to the years of joy my Commodore 64 had afforded me.

I was looking forward to taking the lone computer science course at my high school, but learned that it was only offered to International Baccalaureate (IB) students and not the regular advanced placement (AP) students. BTW, The IB program is a sham as those students shared most of my classes yet received more recognition. Compounding my anger, my friends that took the programming class did not want to enroll in it.

I developed a love of coding by experiencing the results of coding (e.g. games, early web browsers, email, etc) and discovering the computer could solve a problem an infinite number of times as long as I solved it merely once. I developed a knowledge of coding by taking courses in college and reading books on my own time.

I was lucky enough to have gone to a high school with a major system. As luck would have it, I opted for the Computer Science Major. I had been around tech my whole life but this was my first introduction to computer science. It was a enriching experience overall. I once went through a week of no sleep to finish a term project. Turns out I was the only one to actually FINISH the assignment. I later refactored the thing months later and saved many a line of code. It's pretty crazy how much you learn and then even crazier when you go back, look at your earlier work, and think...I wrote THAT?

Good times.

i was introduced to tech in elementary and middle school. my high school actually didn't have much tech involvement.

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