10 ms·

How old are you and what's your oldest code online?

30 points by Edmond 13y ago

Edmond 13y ago
OP here. I am a lurker on HN and often find programming/technical debates that rage around here amusing. I am curious what the age distribution and general programming/geeky background of the HN crowd is. I am going to guess it probably skews younger. Me: 33 oldest I could think of: http://bit.ly/9EKSur http://bit.ly/9EKSur Used to hangout at Slashdot and CodeProject way way back.
weinzierl 13y ago
37, when I was 13 I wrote an equation solver for the C64. It was a simple program, but had a nice GUI and a catchy name: Determinator. I sent it to a German computer magazine and they paid me 200 bucks. It was the first money I earned with programing and it made me really proud. Almost a quarter of a century I accidentally found that Determinator is still alive: http://plus4world.powweb.com/news/710 http://plus4world.powweb.com/news/710
- huhtenberg 13y ago
  It is an absolutely awesome name :)
Namrog84 13y ago
29 here. Also I think there are a lot of age statistics on hn regulars somewhere. I really first started coding in 2009 ever. But I Know I took a few courses in 2002 but never really got into it. As well as a little dabble in mid late 90s. I was a late bloomer into programming. But now I'm in grad school for computer science and am doing quite well and absolutely love programming.
jaxn 13y ago
36. Oldest code I could find is a project on Sourceforge that I created in 2001: http://sourceforge.net/projects/edubase/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/edubase/
duncan_bayne 13y ago
34, and the oldest code of mine online is 11 years old: http://sourceforge.net/projects/count/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/count/ "The count program is a very simple utility that recursively counts the size of directories, optionally producing a per-directory breakdown of usage." Ah, nostalgia. There are closed Solaris SPARC specific bugs in the issue tracker :)
- busterarm 13y ago
  > Ah, nostalgia. There are closed Solaris SPARC specific bugs in the issue tracker :) Nostalgia indeed, that's like a whole other era by now. There's a lot of technology like that that's just on the edge of my memory -- like the Token Ring networks I would see even into the mid/late-90s.
- Edmond 13y ago
  Impressive after all these years still racking up downloads:)
  - duncan_bayne 13y ago
    Yeah, I was wondering about that. Spiders / bots / something like that?
    - Edmond 13y ago
      no, you'll be surprise it is actually people...I occasionally get the unexpected email from someone in china asking for help with some of my old stuff.
busterarm 13y ago
29. The oldest code I had public isn't actually online anymore as of last year. I wrote a bunch of global scripts while a member of a social MUD called The Chatting Zone between 1997 and about 2002. I just looked and apparently the server was taken down last year or so. This makes me a little bit sad. Other than that there seems to a be a few websites I developed or contributed to around 10 years ago that haven't been changed.
ChristianBundy 13y ago
I'm 21, the oldest code I can find is from when I was 17, written in AutoIt... some shitty Windows automation language with BASIC-like syntax. http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/104814-arrays-in-autoit-confuse-me/#entry741306 http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/104814-arrays-in-aut... If I remember correctly, this is an auto-adding bot for MySpace, back when I ran a website for people to add each other and boost their friend count. Thinking back, I just built a digital orgy for MySpace whores. Cool.
irremediable 13y ago
I'm 21 and my oldest code is seven years old. It's stuff I wrote for an MMORPG I used to play.
zaidf 13y ago
From 1999, I was 12 :) http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=4854&lngWId=1 http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?tx...
peteretep 13y ago
30, and BackPAN has some stuff from Feb 2000 when I was 16(!)
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
codingdave 13y ago
41. The oldest code I'm aware of is the content management system that runs infoprint.com, written in 1998 when that product line was a division of IBM. I know they have been modifying/updating it for the past 15 years, but I can tell from the URL structures that it is still the same architecture. I'm sure some lines of code remain from back in my day, but I am equally sure that it has been re-factored many times over. so it is much more their code than mine at this point.
Duhck 13y ago
I am 28, I started writing code at 9. Started writing AOL "proggies" at about 11. Wrote mail servers, mass mailers, and some other fun tools for distributing "warez". My handle was "chud" (shamefully). I wrote tools called Tragic, Mystified, and Tsunami -- all still found on random angelfire sites. This one still has screenshots of some of my programs: http://amp.00server.com/server.html http://amp.00server.com/server.html Other links: http://www.freewebs.com/chewee/aolprograms.htm http://www.freewebs.com/chewee/aolprograms.htm Wonder if any of you were around the AOL scene back in the day.
- Edmond 13y ago
  was on AOL but not as a programmer:) Yahoo! chats maybe:)
  - Duhck 13y ago
    A/S/L? :)
- alaskamiller 13y ago
  I remember AOHell, HaVoK
  - Duhck 13y ago
    Haha I used to write utilities as well but I can't remember what they were called (punters, IM clients, etc).
- sejje 13y ago
  vb6 for lyfe! I started on AOL stuff as well, though I quickly moved on to websites, where I still am today.
Macha 13y ago
I'm 20. I wrote this when I was 15 or 16, put it on GH when I was 16: https://github.com/Macha/Machat/commits/master https://github.com/Macha/Machat/commits/master . Basically an IM system. It wasn't very good, it worked at some point but I don't recall if it was working as I left it. Most stuff on that GH account is pretty terrible, I stopped using it a few years ago so it's mostly a reminder of "Remember when you were bad at this?". I have one under my actual name nowadays which has stuff in a more professional state, but is still pretty disorganised. Previously there was a school website I created when I was 14, but that got replaced with something in the last year or so.
willcate 13y ago
I'm 53. This rather crude little website I wrote has been online for 14 years (since 1999). Some folks subsequently have monkeyed around with some of the content, but the basic design is mine, still intact. http://rivervalleyradio.com http://rivervalleyradio.com
- millstone 13y ago
  It's held up pretty well! <meta name="generator" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0"> :)
  - willcate 13y ago
    LOL - God as my witness I did not use FrontPage. That would be the "subsequent" edits.
benhoyt 13y ago
I'm 2^5. My oldest code online is a Forth compiler I wrote when I was 2^4: https://github.com/benhoyt/third#readme https://github.com/benhoyt/third#readme
- lutusp 13y ago
  > I'm 2^5. My oldest code online is a Forth compiler I wrote when I was 2^4 ... Hah! Birthdays at your house must be really big events, each taking twice as long to appear as the previous one. Maybe that's not such a bad idea. As we get older, time seems to pass more quickly, so ...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
gregrata 13y ago
I'm 45. Oldest code I could find is 18 years old. Game was from 1995 - last code drop was 1998. I thought I had some Commodore stuff from the early/mid-80's up, but can't find it. Ack! :) http://www.ratajik.net/TunnelWars/ http://www.ratajik.net/TunnelWars/ (And YES, that IS a OS/2 program!)
- gregrata 13y ago
  ... and yeah, that site DOES look like it was written in the 90's... as it WAS written in the 90's and hasn't been updated!
IvyMike 13y ago
I'm 40. My Commodore 64 game "Space Caverns 64" was published in Run Magazine in 1986, and you can get it here: https://archive.org/stream/run-magazine-36/Run_Issue_36_1986_Dec_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/run-magazine-36/Run_Issue_36_1986... (Note: there are a bunch of ugly tricks to get the code to fit onto one single C64 40x25 character screen.)
laurenstill 13y ago
I'm 31, and my oldest real code is about 2 years or so. Unless random stuff from college counts (10 years ago).
mooreds 13y ago
I'm 36. A book list application I wrote in spring of 2003 to learn php is still online (I host it). I wrote some java applets (demoing the half life of radiation) in the summer of 1998, but couldn't track them down.
wrs 13y ago
I'm 46. The oldest thing I can find online is from 1987. (I totally forgot I wrote it.) http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/coda/src/coda/coda-src/fail/tvclient.c http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/coda/src/coda/coda-src... (and various other files in that directory) Sorry it's a bit boring, but the "online" requirement kind of skews the answers, doesn't it? Should I upload some more-interesting older code so it can be online too? :)
- Edmond 13y ago
  haha..anything you can link to is good.
- abderrahmane 13y ago
  I was born in 1987
maaarghk 13y ago
I'm 21 - this project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/chatspot/files/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/chatspot/files/ was last released in Dec 2005. So I guess I was 14. I guess there are older versions on there from when I was 13. The best part about this horrible, -horrible- code is that it was actually a vast improvement over the codebase it was built upon. I think you get a CVE advisory when you google it - not my proudest moment. But seriously, I am still pretty proud that as a 14 year old that my phpbb mod ended up installed on some pretty massive forums (my favourite was steve vai's website, but it isn't live anymore, of course! :p) it solved someone's problem, at the end of the day.
- michaelmior 13y ago
  That you do [1]. But I would be proud of that! Not many people write side projects important enough to (a) have someone use it enough to notice a problem and (b) have it be important enough that a CVE advisory is issued at all. I'm sure most people have written code with vulnerabilities over the years. I'm sure I have. Just most of it isn't worthy of being noticed :) [1] http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=2005-4529 http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=2005-4529
bennyg 13y ago
I'm 24. My first try at designing and coding a website, for the game Animal Crossing: http://www.angelfire.com/ar3/acguardian/ http://www.angelfire.com/ar3/acguardian/ It's pretty bad haha, but that was me at 14.
firloop 13y ago
I'm 16. The oldest code of mine that I can find online is a PHP script that I wrote when I was 13. It logs in a MySQL database how many people are on a website. One of the first things I've ever written. https://github.com/lukemiles/php-users-online https://github.com/lukemiles/php-users-online
binarymax 13y ago
Sadly, I no longer have the code, but I wrote a Logo script in 1985 (when I was 7) that generated this image: http://max.io/assets/media/CPU_1985_small.jpg http://max.io/assets/media/CPU_1985_small.jpg I printed it with a dotmatrix, and still have it.
Keyframe 13y ago
33, intro to renderman shading language: http://www.vga.hr/resources/tutorials/3d/rsl/ http://www.vga.hr/resources/tutorials/3d/rsl/ 12-13 years old. I'm sure I could find older somewhere as well, but this is what I am sure about.
jmgutn 13y ago
I'm 25. The oldest code I've online is 3 years old and it's from the time I used svn and google code. Actually I just reviewed it to remember old times... https://code.google.com/p/py2nsis/source/browse/trunk/main.py https://code.google.com/p/py2nsis/source/browse/trunk/main.p...
kenrose 13y ago
Turning 32 in a month. Oldest code is a JS version of the game "lights" I wrote when I was 16 (March 30, 1998). I remember writing it the night before an essay for English class was due because it was way more fun to code. A copy is still available at: http://matuli.free.fr/matthieu/jeux/lights/lights.htm http://matuli.free.fr/matthieu/jeux/lights/lights.htm I thought I was such a 1337 rockstar when I wrote it. Older me thinks it needs some refactoring. Older me also wants to tell younger me to stop being such an angsty teenager and writing whiny dribble about your high school crush in the code's comments.
smokey_the_bear 13y ago
I'm 31. It's not really code, but I made this terrible website for my dad 17 years ago. He still likes it. http://www.public.iastate.edu/~hentzel/Akpatok/ http://www.public.iastate.edu/~hentzel/Akpatok/
- selimthegrim 13y ago
  You don't have a brother named Robert by any chance?
  - smokey_the_bear 13y ago
    Sure do.
jeremyswank 13y ago
56. does html count? pwp.detritus.net from 1997.
stickydink 13y ago
I'm 24, working in SF at a mobile gaming startup. The oldest code I have online is a 'Direct Draw Game Engine', back on planetsourcecode. Some delicious Visual Basic :) Dated February 2003, I would have been 13. Good lord! http://www1.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=43268&lngWId=1 http://www1.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?t...
andersthue 13y ago
I'm 41, my oldest code online is a cms system i wrote around 2000. Did some utils for BBS' back in 1994.
jng 13y ago
I'm turning 40 next week. I think my oldest code online is from '93-'95: graphic demos and a packet-driver-based program that turned a regular PC with two network cards into a bridge (saving a lot of money in the process...). All in x86 assembly language: "Retarded Vectors" mini-demo ('93) ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/mirrors/scenesp.org/compilations/blastersound_bbs/IGUANA/RETVEC01.ZIP "Yann's 3D" 3D mini-demo ('94) ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/mirrors/scenesp.org/compilations/blastersound_bbs/IGUANA/YANNS3D.ZIP "PktBri packet bridge" ('95) http://www.jumpjet.info/Application-Software/DOS/Interfacing/Packet_Bridge/pktbri.zip http://www.jumpjet.info/Application-Software/DOS/Interfacing... Funnily, someone recently captured videos from the graphical demos and uploaded them to youtube: Yanns3D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxs-GnsS1HQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxs-GnsS1HQ Retvec: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBaATafw88g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBaATafw88g (for some reason this one is missing the shape morphing that was the cool part of the demo)
oesmith 13y ago
31, and the oldest I can find is from mid-1998. A small piece of C++ code to replicate the "cool" then-new docking windows in Visual Studio. http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/w-d/docking/article.php/c1451/A-DevStudio-like-CControlBar2.htm http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/w-d/docking/article.php/c1451/A-...
michaelbehan 13y ago
I'm 33. Though I have older code that I cannot find anymore, the oldest I have online is from 2001 - Rain - the powerful, Unix packet builder. It is still in *nix distros today. https://github.com/jabberwock/rain/tree/master/1.3.0/source https://github.com/jabberwock/rain/tree/master/1.3.0/source
dpw 13y ago
I'm 38. If you run Linux on an x86 desktop, you use code that I wrote in 1997: The MTRR support in http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/tree/hw/xfree86/os-support/linux/lnx_video.c http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/tree/hw/xfree86/os-... (big chunks of that are unchanged in 16 years; I also collaborated on the kernel-side MTRR support, but that has been rewritten a couple of times by now). It's probably possible to find online traces of code I wrote a couple of years before that. But I think that is the oldest code still in use.
a3voices 13y ago
I'm 26. My oldest code online is here: http://www.angelfire.com/ma3/medmath/ http://www.angelfire.com/ma3/medmath/ I wrote it in 2000, I think, to do a homework problem.
steerpike 13y ago
39 and my oldest code online would be some LPC from 1993 that was part of a MUD that's still available. http://anguish.org/ http://anguish.org/
kalyan02 13y ago
I am 24. Oldest code online is from 2006 - I was 17 at that time. PHP web counters - http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=2145&lngWId=8 http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?tx... And some open source web designs - http://www.opendesigns.org/profile/kalyan/ http://www.opendesigns.org/profile/kalyan/
ah- 13y ago
I'm 25 now and the oldest things I can still find are little games I built in DarkBasic. The best that is still online is probably this game where you had to kick footballs into a goal with a rc car I made when I was 14: http://home.arcor.de/kojotex/Extreme%20RC.rar http://home.arcor.de/kojotex/Extreme%20RC.rar It's about 1000 lines of spaghetti code, at the time I was really proud to have produced such a huge program. And it runs out of the box with wine on my laptop so here's a screenshot: http://andreas.heider.io/extreme_rc/extreme_rc_3.png http://andreas.heider.io/extreme_rc/extreme_rc_3.png Also, I'm really surprised that arcor.de still hosts these things after eleven years.
RNeff 13y ago
I'm really old. During 1973-5, I worked at Hewlett Packard's Advanced Product Division in Cupertino. I programmed the HP-21 and HP-25 Pocket Scientific Calculators. The chip architecture was bit serial with 14 decimal digits (56 bits). The HP-21 had 1024 by 10 bits of ROM, the HP-25 had 2046 by 10 bits. The HP-25 was user programmable, storing keystrokes, some strokes merged. There were 49 locations. The original assembly microcode was on punched cards, and debugged with an hardware emulator attached to an HP-2100 mini computer. I still have the paper listings. Some years ago, I gave copies to Eric Smith, who scanned, OCR'ed, and very carefully proof read and debugged the result. The listing for the HP-25 is at http://www.jacques-laporte.org/Woodstock/images/hp25.txt http://www.jacques-laporte.org/Woodstock/images/hp25.txt Here is a scan of a handwritten program for the MIT Whirlwind, from 1953 (from Don Knuth's collection): http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_X4100/PDF_index/k-3-pdf/k-3-u2774-Whirlwind-program.pdf http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_...
- babawere 13y ago
  nice one
zachlatta 13y ago
I am 16. I used to play a game called Graal a lot and have code in https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/graalonline-classic/id343297938 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/graalonline-classic/id343297... from back when I was 12.
Namrog84 13y ago
I am impressed with the diversity of this thread! Both in age and area interest!
hsmyers 13y ago
63. C Users Group Extended Precision package. Written on an 8 bit S-100 machine in BDS C (Brain Damage Software, Leor Zolman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDS_C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDS_C). Late 70's early 80's.
wilderw 13y ago
60 years old. Some PDP-11 code found from 1977 (36 years ago). http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/decuslib10-07/01/43,50446/gidus.p11.html http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/decuslib10-07/01/43,50446/gi... Those were the days!
- babawere 13y ago
  Can't remember when i saw something like this last
brentashley 13y ago
I'm 52. There was plenty of earlier stuff, but the oldest code I can still find online is from an article I wrote in 1992 on how to write assembly language routines to extend the QBasic interpreter. http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/zines/qbnews/10-interpreter.txt http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/zines/qbnews/1...
sharemywin 13y ago
I'm 40. It was rewritten into another language but I wrote the original bra search on victorias secret. I don't remeber the language it was some IBM product but i didn't even have a looping statement you could only loop through data. http://www.victoriassecret.com/bras/shop-by-size http://www.victoriassecret.com/bras/shop-by-size
xtraclass 13y ago
I'm 46. My oldest software is from 1997, still running, a software for checking technical details of airplanes.
lutusp 13y ago
I'm 68. Here's a Wikipedia article about one of my better-known programs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Writer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Writer Here's one of my programs that has been available online for 17 years: http://arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index.php http://arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index.php Here's an online article about some programs I wrote in the early 1970s, before Apple Writer: http://arachnoid.com/programmable_calculators/index.html http://arachnoid.com/programmable_calculators/index.html And here's a program I updated this afternoon: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arachnoid.sshelper https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arachnoid.... All my programs are free and open-source. Here's an old article about me: http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programming.php http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programmi...
zeus13i 13y ago
25 here. Oldest online is when I was 21; a GPU-based MD5-password cracker/recovery program: https://code.google.com/p/cudamd5 https://code.google.com/p/cudamd5 It was one of, if not the, fastest at the time :D
fwhiffahder 13y ago
I'm 14. Does HTML count? Because I have a hideous CSS-less page up somewhere from when I was 8.
rectalogic 13y ago
I'm 48. I wrote the XbaeMatrix X/Motif widget set and uploaded to export.mit.lcs.mit.edu in 1991. Here's a directory listing from shortly thereafter http://mirrors.ustc.edu.cn/Xorg/R5contrib/Xstuff http://mirrors.ustc.edu.cn/Xorg/R5contrib/Xstuff Xbae is still actively maintained (but no longer by me) http://xbae.sourceforge.net/ http://xbae.sourceforge.net/

30 points by Edmond 13y ago

OP here. I am a lurker on HN and often find programming/technical debates that rage around here amusing. I am curious what the age distribution and general programming/geeky background of the HN crowd is. I am going to guess it probably skews younger. Me: 33 oldest I could think of: http://bit.ly/9EKSur http://bit.ly/9EKSur Used to hangout at Slashdot and CodeProject way way back.

weinzierl 13y ago

37, when I was 13 I wrote an equation solver for the C64. It was a simple program, but had a nice GUI and a catchy name: Determinator. I sent it to a German computer magazine and they paid me 200 bucks. It was the first money I earned with programing and it made me really proud. Almost a quarter of a century I accidentally found that Determinator is still alive: http://plus4world.powweb.com/news/710 http://plus4world.powweb.com/news/710

huhtenberg 13y ago
It is an absolutely awesome name :)

Namrog84 13y ago

29 here. Also I think there are a lot of age statistics on hn regulars somewhere. I really first started coding in 2009 ever. But I Know I took a few courses in 2002 but never really got into it. As well as a little dabble in mid late 90s. I was a late bloomer into programming. But now I'm in grad school for computer science and am doing quite well and absolutely love programming.

jaxn 13y ago

36. Oldest code I could find is a project on Sourceforge that I created in 2001: http://sourceforge.net/projects/edubase/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/edubase/

duncan_bayne 13y ago

34, and the oldest code of mine online is 11 years old: http://sourceforge.net/projects/count/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/count/ "The count program is a very simple utility that recursively counts the size of directories, optionally producing a per-directory breakdown of usage." Ah, nostalgia. There are closed Solaris SPARC specific bugs in the issue tracker :)

busterarm 13y ago
> Ah, nostalgia. There are closed Solaris SPARC specific bugs in the issue tracker :) Nostalgia indeed, that's like a whole other era by now. There's a lot of technology like that that's just on the edge of my memory -- like the Token Ring networks I would see even into the mid/late-90s.
Edmond 13y ago
Impressive after all these years still racking up downloads:)
- duncan_bayne 13y ago
  Yeah, I was wondering about that. Spiders / bots / something like that?
  - Edmond 13y ago
    no, you'll be surprise it is actually people...I occasionally get the unexpected email from someone in china asking for help with some of my old stuff.

busterarm 13y ago

29. The oldest code I had public isn't actually online anymore as of last year. I wrote a bunch of global scripts while a member of a social MUD called The Chatting Zone between 1997 and about 2002. I just looked and apparently the server was taken down last year or so. This makes me a little bit sad. Other than that there seems to a be a few websites I developed or contributed to around 10 years ago that haven't been changed.

ChristianBundy 13y ago

I'm 21, the oldest code I can find is from when I was 17, written in AutoIt... some shitty Windows automation language with BASIC-like syntax. http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/104814-arrays-in-autoit-confuse-me/#entry741306 http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/104814-arrays-in-aut... If I remember correctly, this is an auto-adding bot for MySpace, back when I ran a website for people to add each other and boost their friend count. Thinking back, I just built a digital orgy for MySpace whores. Cool.

irremediable 13y ago

I'm 21 and my oldest code is seven years old. It's stuff I wrote for an MMORPG I used to play.

zaidf 13y ago

From 1999, I was 12 :) http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=4854&lngWId=1 http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?tx...

peteretep 13y ago

30, and BackPAN has some stuff from Feb 2000 when I was 16(!)

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

codingdave 13y ago

41. The oldest code I'm aware of is the content management system that runs infoprint.com, written in 1998 when that product line was a division of IBM. I know they have been modifying/updating it for the past 15 years, but I can tell from the URL structures that it is still the same architecture. I'm sure some lines of code remain from back in my day, but I am equally sure that it has been re-factored many times over. so it is much more their code than mine at this point.

Duhck 13y ago

I am 28, I started writing code at 9. Started writing AOL "proggies" at about 11. Wrote mail servers, mass mailers, and some other fun tools for distributing "warez". My handle was "chud" (shamefully). I wrote tools called Tragic, Mystified, and Tsunami -- all still found on random angelfire sites. This one still has screenshots of some of my programs: http://amp.00server.com/server.html http://amp.00server.com/server.html Other links: http://www.freewebs.com/chewee/aolprograms.htm http://www.freewebs.com/chewee/aolprograms.htm Wonder if any of you were around the AOL scene back in the day.

Edmond 13y ago
was on AOL but not as a programmer:) Yahoo! chats maybe:)
- Duhck 13y ago
  A/S/L? :)
alaskamiller 13y ago
I remember AOHell, HaVoK
- Duhck 13y ago
  Haha I used to write utilities as well but I can't remember what they were called (punters, IM clients, etc).
sejje 13y ago
vb6 for lyfe! I started on AOL stuff as well, though I quickly moved on to websites, where I still am today.

Macha 13y ago

I'm 20. I wrote this when I was 15 or 16, put it on GH when I was 16: https://github.com/Macha/Machat/commits/master https://github.com/Macha/Machat/commits/master . Basically an IM system. It wasn't very good, it worked at some point but I don't recall if it was working as I left it. Most stuff on that GH account is pretty terrible, I stopped using it a few years ago so it's mostly a reminder of "Remember when you were bad at this?". I have one under my actual name nowadays which has stuff in a more professional state, but is still pretty disorganised. Previously there was a school website I created when I was 14, but that got replaced with something in the last year or so.

willcate 13y ago

I'm 53. This rather crude little website I wrote has been online for 14 years (since 1999). Some folks subsequently have monkeyed around with some of the content, but the basic design is mine, still intact. http://rivervalleyradio.com http://rivervalleyradio.com

millstone 13y ago
It's held up pretty well! <meta name="generator" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0"> :)
- willcate 13y ago
  LOL - God as my witness I did not use FrontPage. That would be the "subsequent" edits.

benhoyt 13y ago

I'm 2^5. My oldest code online is a Forth compiler I wrote when I was 2^4: https://github.com/benhoyt/third#readme https://github.com/benhoyt/third#readme

lutusp 13y ago
> I'm 2^5. My oldest code online is a Forth compiler I wrote when I was 2^4 ... Hah! Birthdays at your house must be really big events, each taking twice as long to appear as the previous one. Maybe that's not such a bad idea. As we get older, time seems to pass more quickly, so ...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

gregrata 13y ago

I'm 45. Oldest code I could find is 18 years old. Game was from 1995 - last code drop was 1998. I thought I had some Commodore stuff from the early/mid-80's up, but can't find it. Ack! :) http://www.ratajik.net/TunnelWars/ http://www.ratajik.net/TunnelWars/ (And YES, that IS a OS/2 program!)

gregrata 13y ago
... and yeah, that site DOES look like it was written in the 90's... as it WAS written in the 90's and hasn't been updated!

IvyMike 13y ago

I'm 40. My Commodore 64 game "Space Caverns 64" was published in Run Magazine in 1986, and you can get it here: https://archive.org/stream/run-magazine-36/Run_Issue_36_1986_Dec_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/run-magazine-36/Run_Issue_36_1986... (Note: there are a bunch of ugly tricks to get the code to fit onto one single C64 40x25 character screen.)

laurenstill 13y ago

I'm 31, and my oldest real code is about 2 years or so. Unless random stuff from college counts (10 years ago).

mooreds 13y ago

I'm 36. A book list application I wrote in spring of 2003 to learn php is still online (I host it). I wrote some java applets (demoing the half life of radiation) in the summer of 1998, but couldn't track them down.

wrs 13y ago

I'm 46. The oldest thing I can find online is from 1987. (I totally forgot I wrote it.) http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/coda/src/coda/coda-src/fail/tvclient.c http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/coda/src/coda/coda-src... (and various other files in that directory) Sorry it's a bit boring, but the "online" requirement kind of skews the answers, doesn't it? Should I upload some more-interesting older code so it can be online too? :)

Edmond 13y ago
haha..anything you can link to is good.
abderrahmane 13y ago
I was born in 1987

maaarghk 13y ago

I'm 21 - this project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/chatspot/files/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/chatspot/files/ was last released in Dec 2005. So I guess I was 14. I guess there are older versions on there from when I was 13. The best part about this horrible, -horrible- code is that it was actually a vast improvement over the codebase it was built upon. I think you get a CVE advisory when you google it - not my proudest moment. But seriously, I am still pretty proud that as a 14 year old that my phpbb mod ended up installed on some pretty massive forums (my favourite was steve vai's website, but it isn't live anymore, of course! :p) it solved someone's problem, at the end of the day.

michaelmior 13y ago
That you do [1]. But I would be proud of that! Not many people write side projects important enough to (a) have someone use it enough to notice a problem and (b) have it be important enough that a CVE advisory is issued at all. I'm sure most people have written code with vulnerabilities over the years. I'm sure I have. Just most of it isn't worthy of being noticed :) [1] http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=2005-4529 http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=2005-4529

bennyg 13y ago

I'm 24. My first try at designing and coding a website, for the game Animal Crossing: http://www.angelfire.com/ar3/acguardian/ http://www.angelfire.com/ar3/acguardian/ It's pretty bad haha, but that was me at 14.

firloop 13y ago

I'm 16. The oldest code of mine that I can find online is a PHP script that I wrote when I was 13. It logs in a MySQL database how many people are on a website. One of the first things I've ever written. https://github.com/lukemiles/php-users-online https://github.com/lukemiles/php-users-online

binarymax 13y ago

Sadly, I no longer have the code, but I wrote a Logo script in 1985 (when I was 7) that generated this image: http://max.io/assets/media/CPU_1985_small.jpg http://max.io/assets/media/CPU_1985_small.jpg I printed it with a dotmatrix, and still have it.

Keyframe 13y ago

33, intro to renderman shading language: http://www.vga.hr/resources/tutorials/3d/rsl/ http://www.vga.hr/resources/tutorials/3d/rsl/ 12-13 years old. I'm sure I could find older somewhere as well, but this is what I am sure about.

jmgutn 13y ago

I'm 25. The oldest code I've online is 3 years old and it's from the time I used svn and google code. Actually I just reviewed it to remember old times... https://code.google.com/p/py2nsis/source/browse/trunk/main.py https://code.google.com/p/py2nsis/source/browse/trunk/main.p...

kenrose 13y ago

Turning 32 in a month. Oldest code is a JS version of the game "lights" I wrote when I was 16 (March 30, 1998). I remember writing it the night before an essay for English class was due because it was way more fun to code. A copy is still available at: http://matuli.free.fr/matthieu/jeux/lights/lights.htm http://matuli.free.fr/matthieu/jeux/lights/lights.htm I thought I was such a 1337 rockstar when I wrote it. Older me thinks it needs some refactoring. Older me also wants to tell younger me to stop being such an angsty teenager and writing whiny dribble about your high school crush in the code's comments.

smokey_the_bear 13y ago

I'm 31. It's not really code, but I made this terrible website for my dad 17 years ago. He still likes it. http://www.public.iastate.edu/~hentzel/Akpatok/ http://www.public.iastate.edu/~hentzel/Akpatok/

selimthegrim 13y ago
You don't have a brother named Robert by any chance?
- smokey_the_bear 13y ago
  Sure do.

jeremyswank 13y ago

56. does html count? pwp.detritus.net from 1997.

stickydink 13y ago

I'm 24, working in SF at a mobile gaming startup. The oldest code I have online is a 'Direct Draw Game Engine', back on planetsourcecode. Some delicious Visual Basic :) Dated February 2003, I would have been 13. Good lord! http://www1.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=43268&lngWId=1 http://www1.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?t...

andersthue 13y ago

I'm 41, my oldest code online is a cms system i wrote around 2000. Did some utils for BBS' back in 1994.

jng 13y ago

I'm turning 40 next week. I think my oldest code online is from '93-'95: graphic demos and a packet-driver-based program that turned a regular PC with two network cards into a bridge (saving a lot of money in the process...). All in x86 assembly language: "Retarded Vectors" mini-demo ('93) ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/mirrors/scenesp.org/compilations/blastersound_bbs/IGUANA/RETVEC01.ZIP "Yann's 3D" 3D mini-demo ('94) ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/mirrors/scenesp.org/compilations/blastersound_bbs/IGUANA/YANNS3D.ZIP "PktBri packet bridge" ('95) http://www.jumpjet.info/Application-Software/DOS/Interfacing/Packet_Bridge/pktbri.zip http://www.jumpjet.info/Application-Software/DOS/Interfacing... Funnily, someone recently captured videos from the graphical demos and uploaded them to youtube: Yanns3D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxs-GnsS1HQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxs-GnsS1HQ Retvec: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBaATafw88g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBaATafw88g (for some reason this one is missing the shape morphing that was the cool part of the demo)

oesmith 13y ago

31, and the oldest I can find is from mid-1998. A small piece of C++ code to replicate the "cool" then-new docking windows in Visual Studio. http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/w-d/docking/article.php/c1451/A-DevStudio-like-CControlBar2.htm http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/w-d/docking/article.php/c1451/A-...

michaelbehan 13y ago

I'm 33. Though I have older code that I cannot find anymore, the oldest I have online is from 2001 - Rain - the powerful, Unix packet builder. It is still in *nix distros today. https://github.com/jabberwock/rain/tree/master/1.3.0/source https://github.com/jabberwock/rain/tree/master/1.3.0/source

dpw 13y ago

I'm 38. If you run Linux on an x86 desktop, you use code that I wrote in 1997: The MTRR support in http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/tree/hw/xfree86/os-support/linux/lnx_video.c http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/tree/hw/xfree86/os-... (big chunks of that are unchanged in 16 years; I also collaborated on the kernel-side MTRR support, but that has been rewritten a couple of times by now). It's probably possible to find online traces of code I wrote a couple of years before that. But I think that is the oldest code still in use.

a3voices 13y ago

I'm 26. My oldest code online is here: http://www.angelfire.com/ma3/medmath/ http://www.angelfire.com/ma3/medmath/ I wrote it in 2000, I think, to do a homework problem.

steerpike 13y ago

39 and my oldest code online would be some LPC from 1993 that was part of a MUD that's still available. http://anguish.org/ http://anguish.org/

kalyan02 13y ago

I am 24. Oldest code online is from 2006 - I was 17 at that time. PHP web counters - http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=2145&lngWId=8 http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?tx... And some open source web designs - http://www.opendesigns.org/profile/kalyan/ http://www.opendesigns.org/profile/kalyan/

ah- 13y ago

I'm 25 now and the oldest things I can still find are little games I built in DarkBasic. The best that is still online is probably this game where you had to kick footballs into a goal with a rc car I made when I was 14: http://home.arcor.de/kojotex/Extreme%20RC.rar http://home.arcor.de/kojotex/Extreme%20RC.rar It's about 1000 lines of spaghetti code, at the time I was really proud to have produced such a huge program. And it runs out of the box with wine on my laptop so here's a screenshot: http://andreas.heider.io/extreme_rc/extreme_rc_3.png http://andreas.heider.io/extreme_rc/extreme_rc_3.png Also, I'm really surprised that arcor.de still hosts these things after eleven years.

RNeff 13y ago

I'm really old. During 1973-5, I worked at Hewlett Packard's Advanced Product Division in Cupertino. I programmed the HP-21 and HP-25 Pocket Scientific Calculators. The chip architecture was bit serial with 14 decimal digits (56 bits). The HP-21 had 1024 by 10 bits of ROM, the HP-25 had 2046 by 10 bits. The HP-25 was user programmable, storing keystrokes, some strokes merged. There were 49 locations. The original assembly microcode was on punched cards, and debugged with an hardware emulator attached to an HP-2100 mini computer. I still have the paper listings. Some years ago, I gave copies to Eric Smith, who scanned, OCR'ed, and very carefully proof read and debugged the result. The listing for the HP-25 is at http://www.jacques-laporte.org/Woodstock/images/hp25.txt http://www.jacques-laporte.org/Woodstock/images/hp25.txt Here is a scan of a handwritten program for the MIT Whirlwind, from 1953 (from Don Knuth's collection): http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_X4100/PDF_index/k-3-pdf/k-3-u2774-Whirlwind-program.pdf http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_...

babawere 13y ago
nice one

zachlatta 13y ago

I am 16. I used to play a game called Graal a lot and have code in https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/graalonline-classic/id343297938 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/graalonline-classic/id343297... from back when I was 12.

Namrog84 13y ago

I am impressed with the diversity of this thread! Both in age and area interest!

hsmyers 13y ago

63. C Users Group Extended Precision package. Written on an 8 bit S-100 machine in BDS C (Brain Damage Software, Leor Zolman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDS_C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDS_C). Late 70's early 80's.

wilderw 13y ago

60 years old. Some PDP-11 code found from 1977 (36 years ago). http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/decuslib10-07/01/43,50446/gidus.p11.html http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/decuslib10-07/01/43,50446/gi... Those were the days!

babawere 13y ago
Can't remember when i saw something like this last

brentashley 13y ago

I'm 52. There was plenty of earlier stuff, but the oldest code I can still find online is from an article I wrote in 1992 on how to write assembly language routines to extend the QBasic interpreter. http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/zines/qbnews/10-interpreter.txt http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/zines/qbnews/1...

sharemywin 13y ago

I'm 40. It was rewritten into another language but I wrote the original bra search on victorias secret. I don't remeber the language it was some IBM product but i didn't even have a looping statement you could only loop through data. http://www.victoriassecret.com/bras/shop-by-size http://www.victoriassecret.com/bras/shop-by-size

xtraclass 13y ago

I'm 46. My oldest software is from 1997, still running, a software for checking technical details of airplanes.

lutusp 13y ago

I'm 68. Here's a Wikipedia article about one of my better-known programs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Writer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Writer Here's one of my programs that has been available online for 17 years: http://arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index.php http://arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index.php Here's an online article about some programs I wrote in the early 1970s, before Apple Writer: http://arachnoid.com/programmable_calculators/index.html http://arachnoid.com/programmable_calculators/index.html And here's a program I updated this afternoon: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arachnoid.sshelper https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arachnoid.... All my programs are free and open-source. Here's an old article about me: http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programming.php http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programmi...

zeus13i 13y ago

25 here. Oldest online is when I was 21; a GPU-based MD5-password cracker/recovery program: https://code.google.com/p/cudamd5 https://code.google.com/p/cudamd5 It was one of, if not the, fastest at the time :D

fwhiffahder 13y ago

I'm 14. Does HTML count? Because I have a hideous CSS-less page up somewhere from when I was 8.

rectalogic 13y ago

I'm 48. I wrote the XbaeMatrix X/Motif widget set and uploaded to export.mit.lcs.mit.edu in 1991. Here's a directory listing from shortly thereafter http://mirrors.ustc.edu.cn/Xorg/R5contrib/Xstuff http://mirrors.ustc.edu.cn/Xorg/R5contrib/Xstuff Xbae is still actively maintained (but no longer by me) http://xbae.sourceforge.net/ http://xbae.sourceforge.net/