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No offense, but you claim you have been "officially coding for 25 years now". You state you are 36. Were you really, officially doing anything at 11 years of ag

No offense, but you claim you have been "officially coding for 25 years now". You state you are 36. Were you really, officially doing anything at 11 years of age. What does that mean? I was a solder tech at 13 years old. I NEVER throw that out there in any blog or write up, even though I was _literally_ getting a paycheck from a company. Does that make me an official solder tech? Hell no. When people ask how much experience I have as that, I usually start from the time I was 18. Why? Most of the world does not care what we did as kids. I find it strange you would throw out "official coder" at 11. Really, what does that mean?

tehlike 8y ago
Eh. I did coding when i was 13, started a project that got famous at the time, was a well known member of programming community back in the day, and got semi famous in .net circles when i contributed to castle project and nhibernate at age 19ish. Nothing big, but we got more free time as kids, hence did more. And yes, i think my engineering work was probably high quality even by my today's standards.
- ui-explorer12 8y ago
  My first reaction was similar to the GP - not sure you can throw out the word "officially" when it refers to something you say you did at 11 years old, unless it's documented or there is some sort of record. When the overall post is how you have nothing to show for it, that's kind of the opposite of official. Don't really care if people want to measure differently, but IMO what you've done in the past 2 years is way more important than how long you've been doing it. The 15 year old genius I went to university with is now 33 and doing the same mundane things as most salary devs.
  - tehlike 8y ago
    None looks further than your last work experience when they are hiring you. That's true.
    - readingnews 8y ago
      I suppose perhaps that is what I was also thinking. I too was doing nutty stuff at 12 years of age, soldering together computers, writing code, creating software. When I interview or talk to people, that would not matter much. Perhaps it just came off as pretentious in the context of the blog.
coding123 8y ago
I was coding lots of games on the PC at that age in Basic. As I went into high school everyone had stories of getting drunk on the weekend. I was coding and learning C++. This guys article generally really resonates with my life. Glad he overcame the fear and posted this.
shakna 8y ago
I was selling homemade games on floppy discs then, so I wouldn't sell short the experiences you can pick up at a young age.
thaumaturgy 8y ago
By around that age I'd learned BASIC, Pascal, and 68k assembler, was participating in BBSs and swapping software and that sort of thing. I wouldn't (and don't) say I was a professional coder then, and I still had a lot to learn, but I was well on my way and it seems reasonable to count it as a starting point. If the author followed a similar path then I don't see a problem with it.
darekkay 8y ago
I think you understand the statement as "officially coding", but the author's point is probably "it is official that I have been coding for 25 years". Thus the confusion. He says nothing about the quality or consequences of his coding. I've started coding at 14, so yes, I have been coding since then (and I can "officialy" make this statement).
mmjaa 8y ago
I wrote my first commercial software at 13, in 1983. That has been relevant all my career - it explains what kind of computer interests I have, and relays clues about my motivation for continuing to work in the industry. I see nothing wrong with this - in the 80's, a heck of a lot of good programmers were teenagers. So? It is still the case, and in my opinion one of the positives of the industry...
blotter_paper 8y ago
At another point in TFA he says "I've been in the field for over 15 years." The sentence you quoted from comes immediately after a sentence where he states his age. I don't think he was being misleading -- he's been in the field for 15 years, but has been coding for 25. I think the word "officially" might be the source of your objection? Perhaps a fair nit-pick, but in context clearly not malicious. He didn't say "in an official capacity," just "officially."
ndnxhs 8y ago
Obviously it means they started programming at 11 which is not unheard of. Not sure why you are trying to gatekeep programming.
vardump 8y ago
When I was 11, I was writing 6510 machine language. Within a year after, 68000. Of course I started all this when I was merely 9. To this day I've been able to use my knowledge about low level hardware features from those days, like IRQs, timers, DMA and such. So why wouldn't it count?
lostgame 8y ago
Wow. Downvote. When I was 11, I was writing assembly to modify SEGA Genesis games, writing my own C++ functions for SRB2, a modification of the DOOM 2 source engine, and experimenting with my own raycasting 3D engines. People can do really serious programming at virtually any age. I’m 29. I’ve been coding for almost two decades, extremely seriously. I got my first job as a software dev for Chase banks directly out of high school, and I’m currently employed at one of the top banks in Canada. I would argue part of my curiosity as a kid really blossomed my coding ability, especially in terms of stretching limited hardware to its limits. Don’t discount kids. They are the future.
- ddingus 8y ago
  Aaron Schwartz, well known case in point. Many of us were doing things in our early years. That crap is for the people who will consider it.
drawkbox 8y ago
It might have been better if he said he was coding professionally since 18-22ish and officially coding since he was 11. I made my first BASIC game on an Apple IIe in the 4th grade at 8 years old. I didn't start professionally coding until 23 when getting paid to code/create. Though I still use that initial game as motivation to keep creating, building and shipping products. My main goal with coding is creative and shipping products, I still had that goal even way back on the Apple IIe. The idea of making games to make a living was amazing, luckily I get to do that and I think it has lots to do with that 4th grade honors/GATE program group where a couple kids and myself made BASIC games. Another big impact was my Pascal/programming teacher in high school Mr. Iles. He let us mess around with all sorts of fun during class and at lunch in computer lab. We setup the first internet and TV cards I had ever seen in '92-'94. We played games like Scorched Earth and created games, one of my friends Adam worked for Intel and was making Sierra looking games at the time. I have had computers at home since middle school and always created projects on them including programming/art projects. I taught myself web development, interactive development (Flash and others in late 90s), and game development with C++ before having professional work by completing projects, much of it pre-internet or early internet just by books and BBSing/IRC. I studied the Quake II engine in early 2000. I learned Unreal starting with 2003 mods and Unity in 2008 on my own, and now make games on those platforms. When mobile finally hit with the iPhone in 2007/8, I realized it was the next handheld gaming market with the SDK and OpenGL support and jumped on that. All of those moments have major impact on future programmers, it did to me. So people really can be seen as "officially coding" well back into elementary/middle/high school, but learning and shipping/creating is a consistent thing in my life since then. It would have been better for OP to say "professionally coding" for less time since they were actually paid to program, but even an artist or writer or actor would say they started way back then but they later got paid/professional work to solidify their field or career professionally. I professionally started working as a coder/web/interactive developer in 1996 and have worked at tech companies, agencies and game studios since doing web, app, game development for entertainment, promotional and marketing systems. My advice to programmers, creators, product developers is to always be creating products for yourself, to ship to the world on a consistent basis, perfect or not, everything is iterative. Work projects are important as well, but to feel fulfilled, side projects or eventually going fulltime on your own projects/products where you get to decide and create is much more fulfilling. It can make contract/work projects less intense and can make you a better team member when you can relinquish control on those projects to a team while you get to work on your projects in freedom or with small teams of people that work great to ship content to the world. Programmers that aren't doing their own thing, might have difficulty with ego and making sure everyone uses what they like in terms of tech/process/product/creative properties of a project. > "25 years of coding, and I'm just beginning" Good, it is always better to have a beginners mind even if you have decades of experience. The more you can create on your own the better. If your friend that you helped quickly learned and created a website, you should thank them that they motivated you to publish and start building for yourself. Programming is a tool, to create, to build products, but shipping and making them public is what it is all about, no matter when you start.
cgrealy 8y ago
Exercise for anyone who thinks that your programming as kid counts. Apply for a job as a senior dev that requires 10 years experience when you're 21. See how interview offers you get....
- dechamp 8y ago
  It only counted in the sense of the topic, which was me having no work to show for it in the sense of having a portfolio. Perhaps I could clean up the post to make it clearer.
dechamp 8y ago
Well i've been coding since 11. I also mentioned only professionally for 15 years. I could see how it comes of in a misleading manor if read from a different view, but I have literally been coding since 11, now 36 so saying 25 years doesn't mean I'm wrong.

tehlike 8y ago

Eh. I did coding when i was 13, started a project that got famous at the time, was a well known member of programming community back in the day, and got semi famous in .net circles when i contributed to castle project and nhibernate at age 19ish. Nothing big, but we got more free time as kids, hence did more. And yes, i think my engineering work was probably high quality even by my today's standards.

ui-explorer12 8y ago
My first reaction was similar to the GP - not sure you can throw out the word "officially" when it refers to something you say you did at 11 years old, unless it's documented or there is some sort of record. When the overall post is how you have nothing to show for it, that's kind of the opposite of official. Don't really care if people want to measure differently, but IMO what you've done in the past 2 years is way more important than how long you've been doing it. The 15 year old genius I went to university with is now 33 and doing the same mundane things as most salary devs.
- tehlike 8y ago
  None looks further than your last work experience when they are hiring you. That's true.
  - readingnews 8y ago
    I suppose perhaps that is what I was also thinking. I too was doing nutty stuff at 12 years of age, soldering together computers, writing code, creating software. When I interview or talk to people, that would not matter much. Perhaps it just came off as pretentious in the context of the blog.

coding123 8y ago

I was coding lots of games on the PC at that age in Basic. As I went into high school everyone had stories of getting drunk on the weekend. I was coding and learning C++. This guys article generally really resonates with my life. Glad he overcame the fear and posted this.

shakna 8y ago

I was selling homemade games on floppy discs then, so I wouldn't sell short the experiences you can pick up at a young age.

thaumaturgy 8y ago

By around that age I'd learned BASIC, Pascal, and 68k assembler, was participating in BBSs and swapping software and that sort of thing. I wouldn't (and don't) say I was a professional coder then, and I still had a lot to learn, but I was well on my way and it seems reasonable to count it as a starting point. If the author followed a similar path then I don't see a problem with it.

darekkay 8y ago

I think you understand the statement as "officially coding", but the author's point is probably "it is official that I have been coding for 25 years". Thus the confusion. He says nothing about the quality or consequences of his coding. I've started coding at 14, so yes, I have been coding since then (and I can "officialy" make this statement).

mmjaa 8y ago

I wrote my first commercial software at 13, in 1983. That has been relevant all my career - it explains what kind of computer interests I have, and relays clues about my motivation for continuing to work in the industry. I see nothing wrong with this - in the 80's, a heck of a lot of good programmers were teenagers. So? It is still the case, and in my opinion one of the positives of the industry...

blotter_paper 8y ago

At another point in TFA he says "I've been in the field for over 15 years." The sentence you quoted from comes immediately after a sentence where he states his age. I don't think he was being misleading -- he's been in the field for 15 years, but has been coding for 25. I think the word "officially" might be the source of your objection? Perhaps a fair nit-pick, but in context clearly not malicious. He didn't say "in an official capacity," just "officially."

ndnxhs 8y ago

Obviously it means they started programming at 11 which is not unheard of. Not sure why you are trying to gatekeep programming.

vardump 8y ago

When I was 11, I was writing 6510 machine language. Within a year after, 68000. Of course I started all this when I was merely 9. To this day I've been able to use my knowledge about low level hardware features from those days, like IRQs, timers, DMA and such. So why wouldn't it count?

lostgame 8y ago

Wow. Downvote. When I was 11, I was writing assembly to modify SEGA Genesis games, writing my own C++ functions for SRB2, a modification of the DOOM 2 source engine, and experimenting with my own raycasting 3D engines. People can do really serious programming at virtually any age. I’m 29. I’ve been coding for almost two decades, extremely seriously. I got my first job as a software dev for Chase banks directly out of high school, and I’m currently employed at one of the top banks in Canada. I would argue part of my curiosity as a kid really blossomed my coding ability, especially in terms of stretching limited hardware to its limits. Don’t discount kids. They are the future.

ddingus 8y ago
Aaron Schwartz, well known case in point. Many of us were doing things in our early years. That crap is for the people who will consider it.

drawkbox 8y ago

It might have been better if he said he was coding professionally since 18-22ish and officially coding since he was 11. I made my first BASIC game on an Apple IIe in the 4th grade at 8 years old. I didn't start professionally coding until 23 when getting paid to code/create. Though I still use that initial game as motivation to keep creating, building and shipping products. My main goal with coding is creative and shipping products, I still had that goal even way back on the Apple IIe. The idea of making games to make a living was amazing, luckily I get to do that and I think it has lots to do with that 4th grade honors/GATE program group where a couple kids and myself made BASIC games. Another big impact was my Pascal/programming teacher in high school Mr. Iles. He let us mess around with all sorts of fun during class and at lunch in computer lab. We setup the first internet and TV cards I had ever seen in '92-'94. We played games like Scorched Earth and created games, one of my friends Adam worked for Intel and was making Sierra looking games at the time. I have had computers at home since middle school and always created projects on them including programming/art projects. I taught myself web development, interactive development (Flash and others in late 90s), and game development with C++ before having professional work by completing projects, much of it pre-internet or early internet just by books and BBSing/IRC. I studied the Quake II engine in early 2000. I learned Unreal starting with 2003 mods and Unity in 2008 on my own, and now make games on those platforms. When mobile finally hit with the iPhone in 2007/8, I realized it was the next handheld gaming market with the SDK and OpenGL support and jumped on that. All of those moments have major impact on future programmers, it did to me. So people really can be seen as "officially coding" well back into elementary/middle/high school, but learning and shipping/creating is a consistent thing in my life since then. It would have been better for OP to say "professionally coding" for less time since they were actually paid to program, but even an artist or writer or actor would say they started way back then but they later got paid/professional work to solidify their field or career professionally. I professionally started working as a coder/web/interactive developer in 1996 and have worked at tech companies, agencies and game studios since doing web, app, game development for entertainment, promotional and marketing systems. My advice to programmers, creators, product developers is to always be creating products for yourself, to ship to the world on a consistent basis, perfect or not, everything is iterative. Work projects are important as well, but to feel fulfilled, side projects or eventually going fulltime on your own projects/products where you get to decide and create is much more fulfilling. It can make contract/work projects less intense and can make you a better team member when you can relinquish control on those projects to a team while you get to work on your projects in freedom or with small teams of people that work great to ship content to the world. Programmers that aren't doing their own thing, might have difficulty with ego and making sure everyone uses what they like in terms of tech/process/product/creative properties of a project. > "25 years of coding, and I'm just beginning" Good, it is always better to have a beginners mind even if you have decades of experience. The more you can create on your own the better. If your friend that you helped quickly learned and created a website, you should thank them that they motivated you to publish and start building for yourself. Programming is a tool, to create, to build products, but shipping and making them public is what it is all about, no matter when you start.

cgrealy 8y ago

Exercise for anyone who thinks that your programming as kid counts. Apply for a job as a senior dev that requires 10 years experience when you're 21. See how interview offers you get....

dechamp 8y ago
It only counted in the sense of the topic, which was me having no work to show for it in the sense of having a portfolio. Perhaps I could clean up the post to make it clearer.

dechamp 8y ago

Well i've been coding since 11. I also mentioned only professionally for 15 years. I could see how it comes of in a misleading manor if read from a different view, but I have literally been coding since 11, now 36 so saying 25 years doesn't mean I'm wrong.