5 ms·

I was surprised to see no mention of game development as what drew one into coding. Half the cats I've worked with got bit by the programming bug initially want

I was surprised to see no mention of game development as what drew one into coding. Half the cats I've worked with got bit by the programming bug initially wanting to make games.

shurcooL 11y ago
Yep, that was me. Now I'm more into making helpful tools, but games are a fun side hobby.
- sharkweek 11y ago
  Just to be unnecessarily argumentative, I think video games ARE helpful tools for a wide variety of reasons =)
danielhooper 11y ago
This is somewhat true for me. My first exposure to coding was with Action Script back when I was animating stick figures in Macromedia Flash, which led to me discovering what CSS/HTML were. I never went anywhere with it at the time, I must have been like 8 or 9 years old, but I like to think it's helped lead me into my role as an iOS developer.
lucb1e 11y ago
Game Maker is what got me started after MSIE 5 let me down - only like ten years later I discovered MSIE did in fact have an error console to show you what you did wrong, making it not completely trial and error! So did creating games pull me into programming? Hmm, kind of, after another avenue failed. But I certainly recognize what you mean, I also know many people who'd love to make games full time (and some do! Just not all, not enough demand).
hkmurakami 11y ago
The survey says that the median age of respondents was 27 and on average they started programming 11 months ago. They didn't give a standard deviation, but presumably there are not many who are in their early teens. I say this because the cohort you describe will have started playing games at a younger age, and would have self selected itself out of this survey by venturing into small time game development on their own at an age younger than the survey respondent demographic.
aksx 11y ago
> Half the cats I've worked with what does `cats` mean in this context? maybe a cultural thing.
- mng2 11y ago
  Comes from jazz idiom. Cool people, basically.

I was surprised to see no mention of game development as what drew one into coding. Half the cats I've worked with got bit by the programming bug initially wanting to make games.

shurcooL 11y ago

Yep, that was me. Now I'm more into making helpful tools, but games are a fun side hobby.

sharkweek 11y ago
Just to be unnecessarily argumentative, I think video games ARE helpful tools for a wide variety of reasons =)

danielhooper 11y ago

This is somewhat true for me. My first exposure to coding was with Action Script back when I was animating stick figures in Macromedia Flash, which led to me discovering what CSS/HTML were. I never went anywhere with it at the time, I must have been like 8 or 9 years old, but I like to think it's helped lead me into my role as an iOS developer.

lucb1e 11y ago

Game Maker is what got me started after MSIE 5 let me down - only like ten years later I discovered MSIE did in fact have an error console to show you what you did wrong, making it not completely trial and error! So did creating games pull me into programming? Hmm, kind of, after another avenue failed. But I certainly recognize what you mean, I also know many people who'd love to make games full time (and some do! Just not all, not enough demand).

hkmurakami 11y ago

The survey says that the median age of respondents was 27 and on average they started programming 11 months ago. They didn't give a standard deviation, but presumably there are not many who are in their early teens. I say this because the cohort you describe will have started playing games at a younger age, and would have self selected itself out of this survey by venturing into small time game development on their own at an age younger than the survey respondent demographic.

aksx 11y ago

> Half the cats I've worked with what does `cats` mean in this context? maybe a cultural thing.

mng2 11y ago
Comes from jazz idiom. Cool people, basically.