My programming history

Thanks to Scott for making me do this :@

1. How old were you when you started programming?

I started messing about with Q Basic back when I was about 14 but never wrote anything 'proper' until I started college at 16.

2. How did you get started in programming?

My dad was one of those bedroom coders when I as little (he actually wrote a cool piece of software that was in use for over 10 years and saw life on the ZX-Spectrum, Amiga and PC). I picked up one of his books and had the intention of writing something cool....it ended up just being 'hello world!'.

3. What was your first language?

Q Basic, followed by Pascal at college and Delphi. I messed around with HTML and made a few dodgy websites that I think still exist to this day somewhere. [edited - Luke's RCT Site]

4. What was the first real program that you wrote?

My A' Level coursework, a friend of mine had a virtual airline (Microsoft flight simulator geekiness) and he wanted a program to manage his pilots ours and generate html reports for his website. What took me months in Delphi I could now knock together in a matter of days. Oh yea I didn't use a database either, stored everything in random access files....ergh!

5. What languages have you used since you started programming?

HTML, JavaScript, C, Java, C#, ASP,C++,TCL (I loved that), T-SQL,Basic,Pascal,O-Caml, Matlab, XML,Delphi

6. What was your first programming gig?

I freelanced when I was about 16 doing HTML for some company who'd designed the website. I did everything with tables,yuck.

7. If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

Yea. Its fun when you have a challenge. Though I still hate T-SQL...I love you LINQ.

8. If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

As Scott has said Google (and soon stackoverflow) is your friend.

And I tag Chris Forster, Rob Ashton and Philip Stears!