Ask HN: How did you originally get into/learn coding?

I wanted to make video games as a kid. I tried things like opening up executable files in Notepad to see if I could figure out what was going on, but it was all junk. I eventually found some game creation systems online, and their communities had a bunch of coders and other creative types. I also emailed game developers, one of which set me up with a proper compiler and pushed me in the right direction

I spent a lot of time in the local library checking out software books, browsing a website called Programmer's Heaven that had a bunch of useful text and source files, and experimenting a lot

The more I learned, the greater the scopes of my projects became. But it never stopped being something that was both driven by curiosity and also had satisfying progression

I was 11, so, 1980. My friend rolled up on his bike, and said I gotta check out this thing at the local radio shack - you'd type something and it would say it!

Found out it wasn't that easy. But Radio Shack didn't kick my poor ass out that often, and they had programming books on their shelves and good for the time computers.

They'd kick me out of one R.S., I'd go to another one, or I'd go up to an electronics store "Shaak Electronics"(?) where they had the new Apple IIs, PETs, and Atari 400/800s.

Eventually I turned 12, got my own money (paper route - minimum age), and my dad took out a $600 loan, so I could get a 16k Atari 400, a 410 Tape Recorder for storage, and a black and white TV. I only had the PILOT and BASIC programming languages - so I learned 6502 assembly from coding bytes into a basic string and running it, lol

I still love computers

It was 1972 and I was unemployed, no degree and on benefits. Someone at the Labour Exchange got on my case and sent me for a number of interviews. One was as a programmer, it sounded cool. I got the job and was sent on a 2 week COBOL course.

It's not like that now.

I got a Turbo Pascal book as a present for doing well in school. It took me a while to understand that you can't make websites with that :)

Then I got a cracked copy of Adobe Dreamwaver and learned HTML using the visual editor.

For some reason my PC came bundled with Visual Studio[0] 2008 edition. It had all the docs necessary to write small web apps, albeit they only worked on Internet Explorer, which was dominant at the time. Amazing how far we've come though, with ready access to near-infinite docs and tutorials.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_Studio#2008

I wanted to play "lunar lander" on the local university's Honeywell 1640. Ransacked trash cans for user IDs/passwords ( it used teletype terminals). Then I was curious about how the program worked. Went from there...

Picked it up in university, starting with java. We did a course in high school learning cocoa but I'm pretty sure none of that stuck.