27 replies to this topic

[TheLionKing]

Hi,

Just want to know how did you learn programming?

Here is my story ...

I learned programming from BASIC. However, I was told to choose Biology as my subject by my parents ... even though they knew I was interested in Computer. I learned Visual Basic then and after that learned C/C++ on my own. I took admission in a best institute in my city Karachi to help me in Programming. I was pretty famous in the class for cross questoning the teacher. After a few days I realized that I knew twice more as my teacher knew. Since then I am learning everything on my own.

[Amithran]

I started playing quake.

I started making quake scripts to be a better quaker.

I wanted to displaymy awsome possum scripts to the hole world.

I inquired into geocities.com and the wonderful of html.

I discovered CGI.

I decided I wanted a guest book.

I made one, in perl - by reverse engineering other scripts I had seen and making my own script from absolute scratch.

I liked it.

I inquired into c/c++.

Almost immediatly I decided "Im gonna be a game developer!"...

I inquired into DirectX (7 at the time?).

I realized my lack of knowledge.

I reinvested my time in c/c++.

And javascript, and flash, and html, and perl.

I coded a win32 console application featuring a scrolling terrain game
using colored character codes for display.

I re-inquired into DirectX(8).
I inquired about OpenGl.

I made my first graphic game.


Skip ahead.


I know a lot of stuff in a lot of languages. :)
Unfortunatly Im more of "A jack of all trades" then a "Master of one".

[anubis]

i got my first computer when i was six... my old love the amiga500+. man, this thing was so ahead of it's time. before that i remember playing pacman once on a machine my father had that was called pc10. i wasted my time with games on the amiga. i first discovered that there was more to computers when i got my first x86 pc a 386. i started out with basic. i got a few books from the local library and after i had grasped the basic concepts i wrote a little text adventure. nothing fancy though. i almost forgot about coding for a year or two until i discovered c/c++. i read one or two books. read a LOT of code from the web. i would say that i learned most of my stuff from other peoples code. especially when it comes to engine architecture and stuff like that. since i had started to play games so early it was no question that i wanted to write them myself. i started out with mode 13h and moved on to directx ( 6/7 ) which i didn't like very much ( i never started to learn direct3d ). opengl is what i use today. just recently i discovered D and i think i will stick with it. on the way i picked up some other stuff like html, php, lua, tcl, etc. things for the future are python and ruby. also squeak is something i once looked into and i definetly want to come back to it ( squeak is a version of smalltalk )

[anubis]

heh, i forgot to mention ( maybe i wanted to forget this :) ) my little adventure with VB. i had to learn it for work. i was working for a database company at that time. oh... and java of course. we had it in school and i also used it on a job

[TheLionKing]

;) Interesting. I forgot to mention that I also learned Java, Oracle, VB and HTML. Learned OpenGL and now inquiring DirectX9. :blush:

[bladder]

anubis said:

my old love the amiga500+.

amiga 500 was king man. Lemming RULE! :yes:

... so does a game called oops up. anyone remember that one? This post brings back memories

[baldurk]

I've still got my 500+. I brought it down a month or two ago to play on. It was fun. Supercars II, IK+, the list goes on :D.

[Ishpeck]

At my 13th birthday party, some friends of mine sat at my old DOS computer and started using QBASIC to write stupid little programs. I watched, looked at the code and figured it out. Ever since, I was hooked. I learned C two years later by the graces of Sams Publishing and picked up C++ by downloading example source from around the internet. Because my father worked at Novell, I got a lot of exposure to Java. I've just kind of been writing code ever since.

[hanzac]

Far far away, I knew the name - "computer".
I got a computer learning machine (a special product only made in China ;) ), and I play 8-bit games and learning BASIC on it.
When I entered the senior high school on the first year, I got a Celeron-300A-64MB-Savage-3D computer which I chose all the parts by myself.

Of course, playing games was the first thing (although while I told my parents that I would always use it to learn my subjects :rolleyes: . Later I had some unhappy days with my parents 'cause I cheated them. But now I wanted to say sorry very much...... I was enchanted by computers. )

I use my computer make htmls, jscript, asp, flashes & learning vb.
Now I am in university & I discovered C/C++, ASM, DirectX and much more. I found myself fall in love again now. (but now I can control myself and make good use of computers.)

[anubis]

the story of a true hero *sigh* ;)

[TheLionKing]

:( You reminded me of my old days ... *sigh* :yes:

[baldurk]

look at us old folks reminiscing of the 'good old days'. :P

[TheLionKing]

I meant the days when I was about 6 to 10. :blush:

[baldurk]

ssh! ;P

[donBerto]

ahh yes... [sigh]

let's see, I moved from the farms of bohol [phillipines] back with my mom in the US [hawaii, at the time]. cities, compared to rural settings, is SO much more technological. My mom introduced me to THE computer [a packard bell 286 with 10 MB hard drive [huge!] and 512Kb RAM]. after about a week of "playing around" with it, I happened to spill a glass of milk... IN the case. In my haste of trying to repair it, I rushed to the library to look for books on computers. took them ALL home. Opened the box to find that nothing serious has happened, just cleaned the box. I read the books anyway and found all of the books refer to BASIC. after that summer, i was a decent BASIC "programmer". I wrote drug wars in basic. I tried to emulate word perfect, beacon mavis and Harvard Graphics [to no success]. I wrote things that weren't always good and that's all I'll say about that, pending a court case :D that was all in 1993.

in my pursuit of higher learning, I came across C. I didn't have the prerequisites [at the time] to enroll in computer science in high school but I had a class right next to the CS class. so when my class got out, I rushed next door to copy whatever was on the board. I thought C was the class' grade - hence why I didn't go to the library to look up the language C. it was also hard to look at every book for pseudo or partial code. eventually, I enrolled in a CS class, taught by the same teacher i had been copying from. because of his left over notes on the board, I found myself ahead of the class. ...

before i start to ramble, that's pretty much how I came to be a programmer. what lead me to study CS in college was because I was denied enlistment into the military [air force] - because of my bad eyes and asthma. I no longer have asthma [now called reactive lung disorder since i haven't had an attack in 4+ years].

OGL vs DX

in summer of 2000, I became VERY interested in 3D graphics. so I bought 2 books - an opengl and a directx book. I read the opengl book first. to this date, i have NOT read the directx book.

to sum it up, I may have not started with a vintage machine like the 8086 or the an amiga or a tandy but the intel 286 is vintage enough for me. I still have the processor [the case and compononents long have been destroyed]. also with that computer came the first optical mouse that used light, not laser [so it was rather slow, and required a special light-sensitive mouse pad] - those, i still have too.

thanks for taking me down memory lane.

:yes:

[CyraX]

I have a rather strange story.
My first intro to comps was in 1998. Earlier to that nothing. Then I started off with C. Then when we got internet connectino @ college (it costs a fortune to own internet during those days) I saw some code on mc2.nu mostly exploits code. Then I decided I would learn C inside out. I guess I am still learning about C :D we never end up learning the whole of it.
What followed was PERL, C++, JAVA (YUCK) and Assembly (teeny weeny for debugging).
Now I am into Maxscript (mascript needs lots of improvement).
Learnt MEL scripts but was not happy with it.
What else have I learnt ?? hmm learnt Spanish after I read a text by some great hack writer. Sir Haxalot.
That is counting languages as in not just computer languanges :D

[xantoz]

I am still a beginner in windows opengl and directx. I am in 12th grade. I was ignorant of computers just 6 yrs back, before then computers in chennai, india were so costly and i was actually interested in history especially history harmony between communities in south indian villages. when first used my father's office comp it seemed to me like miracles(first time boot to windows, never heard before). next year after irritating my parents i bought my first computer for about $2000 after a lot of fighting. It was then when the compter jobs fever started. Everyone in bro's class except my bro were selecting comp as electives in undergrad eng. People mugged up theories and programs(thats the case still, my classmates ask doubts on comp prog though they get the same marks i get coz many just byheart them) and they wanted to make big in US. After the dot com boom subsided and came dot come gloom most wont choose comp coz its "risky". Thats my city(I pride about my country's past than present). I got interested in game programming after reading a Comp Gaming World special on making games. Making games let you to be like god i can say. My knowlegde in opengl is purely based the online tutorials written by the community coz you don't get books on opengl in my city. Right now i know basic rendering and collision. Hopefully i will do lot in coming years. I am not learning this for bucks(some people do resulting in stupid games) but for fun of understanding how all that school physics and maths makes sense.

[DrunkenCoder]

six long years ago I stumbled upon something called "debug" on an 486machine supposedly you could control the computer via this little program, so my quest for x86 assembly god hood started... having made it through the seven hells of realmode segmented memory dos interupts and frequent reboots I stumbled upon a package konwn as DJGPP. That started me on the way of C, and all was well.
The came university C++ was the way there so I embarked on yet another journey. My adventures took me to many bewildering and beatiful places from the saftey of mode13 to the elusive caverns of DirectX I visited the shrine known as OpenGL and was kept hostage of the dreaded MFC. I found a trusted and enlightening companion in STL.

I've made small detours to places like PHP Pascal and JavaScript I actuallly once thought highly of DHTML even though "it's no real language", I've encountred Haskell and Prolog and they both thought me many things.

Yes that's the road I have walked, I've now realized that as the masters of zen have always said it's the journey not the goal that's important.

[Noor]

Hey CyraX, we haven't seen you for a while :D... Welcome back :)

[CyraX]

yeah nkharrat. After a hectic E3 and ECTS work I have come back... << I'll be back >>
Anyways, now that I have come in I better get working on the game and the articles. I have started writing articles on 3DS Max Script/3DS MAx SDK :D
I am sure it would be good because I have seen hardly any stuff on the net. HARDLY. Let me finish it in a short while. Oh btw now that I have gotten some net connection to the room, I might be able to do small uploads.