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I started working at 17. So that's 30 years for me! Darn, I should have some sort of celebration ;-) My very first paid project was designing the PA audio syst

I started working at 17. So that's 30 years for me! Darn, I should have some sort of celebration ;-) My very first paid project was designing the PA audio system in the Lille (france) metro. It was a fancy Mac SE/30 with a IEEE GPIO card. That was driving two big Revox Tape machines, and was playing one, rewinding the other etc. Occasionally it would also play a digital audio file (w000t!). It was all in Pascal at the time, and I had a whooping 4MB of ram. System ran for well over 10 years!

woofyman 11y ago
My first program was written in Dartmouth Basic. The original version of Basic. In college, for the first 2 years I used punched cards. Then after college I programmed a jet fighter. Then realtime embedded avioinics stuff. I got tired of working with custom hardware which was challenging distinguishing between hardware and software bugs. After 20 years of Windows programming, I re-invented myself as a HTML, CSS, CoffeeScript, Javascript, LUA, PHP, Angular, Ember and iOS developer.
- joshmanders 11y ago
  Thanks guys, you all make me feel better about turning 31 in a month and a half and have been coding since 15.
  - valine 11y ago
    I stated coding when I was 11. I turned 19 a couple months ago. I guess that makes me one of those junior developers everyone talks about.
    - ska 11y ago
      Coding as a child often makes you a better junior developer. It very rarely makes you anything but a junior developer, your first few years full time at it.
      - valine 11y ago
        This is very true. I had my first full time internship last summer and although I wouldn't say I was unprepared, it opened my eyes to all the things I don't know. Code reviews take some getting used to when you're coming from a purely academic world. From reading hacker news I knew there would be blindspots in my education. It felt good filling in some of the blanks.
pjmlp 11y ago
I started coding at the age of 10 with Timex Basic, Z80 and everything evolve from there. On my first internship after high school while waiting for university applications to come out was done in Clipper and Access/Visual Basic. Also starting OS/400 backup jobs. Not the set of languages that I already enjoyed most, but it kept myself busy during the Summer.
- randcraw 11y ago
  I'm 58 too. First program: HP25 assembly (calculator) in 1975; second: Dartmouth BASIC (horrible) in 1976. After a degree in zoology, I went back for a MS in CS part time. I've been programming in various forms of R&D since. I can't imagine having done anything else. Sure, many other careers sound appealing. But software has been stimulating and sustainable while affording me a managable level of stress and downtime as needed. (Try doing that as a physician or veterinarian, both careers that I once considered). That said, I sympathize with the OP's frustrations. Software jobs usually imply a rather flat hierarchy, with little opportunity for advancement other than leads or principals. Any further rise in responsibility requires that you leave tech behind and spend your days in meetings. Not for me. However if you work in R&D without a PhD, I've found a severe glass ceiling (especially at larger companies). In general, no advancement beyond lead staff for you. If I'd known that 10-20 years ago, I would have handled that differently (get a PhD, work at smaller firms, or leave R&D). The road not taken, I guess...

woofyman 11y ago

My first program was written in Dartmouth Basic. The original version of Basic. In college, for the first 2 years I used punched cards. Then after college I programmed a jet fighter. Then realtime embedded avioinics stuff. I got tired of working with custom hardware which was challenging distinguishing between hardware and software bugs. After 20 years of Windows programming, I re-invented myself as a HTML, CSS, CoffeeScript, Javascript, LUA, PHP, Angular, Ember and iOS developer.

joshmanders 11y ago
Thanks guys, you all make me feel better about turning 31 in a month and a half and have been coding since 15.
- valine 11y ago
  I stated coding when I was 11. I turned 19 a couple months ago. I guess that makes me one of those junior developers everyone talks about.
  - ska 11y ago
    Coding as a child often makes you a better junior developer. It very rarely makes you anything but a junior developer, your first few years full time at it.
    - valine 11y ago
      This is very true. I had my first full time internship last summer and although I wouldn't say I was unprepared, it opened my eyes to all the things I don't know. Code reviews take some getting used to when you're coming from a purely academic world. From reading hacker news I knew there would be blindspots in my education. It felt good filling in some of the blanks.

pjmlp 11y ago

I started coding at the age of 10 with Timex Basic, Z80 and everything evolve from there. On my first internship after high school while waiting for university applications to come out was done in Clipper and Access/Visual Basic. Also starting OS/400 backup jobs. Not the set of languages that I already enjoyed most, but it kept myself busy during the Summer.

randcraw 11y ago
I'm 58 too. First program: HP25 assembly (calculator) in 1975; second: Dartmouth BASIC (horrible) in 1976. After a degree in zoology, I went back for a MS in CS part time. I've been programming in various forms of R&D since. I can't imagine having done anything else. Sure, many other careers sound appealing. But software has been stimulating and sustainable while affording me a managable level of stress and downtime as needed. (Try doing that as a physician or veterinarian, both careers that I once considered). That said, I sympathize with the OP's frustrations. Software jobs usually imply a rather flat hierarchy, with little opportunity for advancement other than leads or principals. Any further rise in responsibility requires that you leave tech behind and spend your days in meetings. Not for me. However if you work in R&D without a PhD, I've found a severe glass ceiling (especially at larger companies). In general, no advancement beyond lead staff for you. If I'd known that 10-20 years ago, I would have handled that differently (get a PhD, work at smaller firms, or leave R&D). The road not taken, I guess...