[irchans]

Interestingly, I learned to program in a completely different way. When I started in 1979, the computer terminal where I learned could only run BASIC. There were no directories, just BASIC. We had one book that could teach you most of the commands, IF--THEN GOTO, SET, PRINT, FOR, NEXT, GOSUB. There was no WHILE statement. I think I spent months playing with those before learning about arrays. The biggest breakthrough was finding a Star Trek game in BASIC. I was amazed at what could be done with such simple commands. After a year or two, my father bought a TI 99 4A computer and I got a Commodore 64 about a year after that. You could write assembly code on the C64. I learned about ASCII file input and output in 1982. I don't remember learning about directories until I got to college in 1983. I don't think I used any libraries before 1986. (I did use punch cards in 1982). I think the first time I saw UNIX was 1990. I don't think I saw a package manager before the 1990's after I had been programming for over 10 years. The first time I did object oriented programming was about 1994 I think, C++. I got an MSCS in 1996.

[slantyyz]

I learned how to program BASIC in the early 80s from magazines, when program source code was printed out and you had to type it into your computer verbatim. At some point, you switch from being a typing drone to trying to understand what you were typing.

The worst part was when there were bugs in the printed source code. If you didn't know how to fix it, you had to wait until the errata showed up in a future issue of the magazine.

[pinewurst]

Similarly enough I went from BASIC to Pascal to C. Actually I tried to go from BASIC to C, but that was a bridge too far due to my lack of visceral appreciation for structure. At that time, Turbo Pascal was a god-send as a development environment - crazy fast, decent editor and library all in one tiny thing. In some sense, I owe any advancement in CS to that tool.

[atemerev]

So did I, but we live in 2019 now. The optimal path for productive coding looks different these days.