[hsitz]

"I've been programming for a long, long time. Went to college for it when I was a pre-teen."

Yet you don't tell us how old you are, so it's hard to get a grasp for how long you've been programming. As someone who first started programming in 1979, I notice that there are plenty of people who say they've "been programming a long time" who weren't even born when I started programming. This isn't a criticism, just a comment that we don't really have any idea how long you've been programming. I can picture a 29-year old saying the same thing you did. Time is relative, something that becomes more and more clear, I think, the older a person gets.

[herodoturtle]

> As someone who first started programming in 1979

I absolutely love that there are seasoned experts like you on HN.

Would you mind sharing with us what you're working on these days?

Compared to you I'm relatively young (I've been programming around 26 years) and in my circles I don't get to mix with too many older programmers.

Would love to hear your thoughts on career trajectories.

For me personally, I'm gradually spending less time on pursuing commercial interests, and more time on pro bono projects - and I love the idea of working on open source software indefinitely once I retire.

Cheers from South Africa.

[datavirtue]

Same here, 31 years. I'm 43 and started in around 1989-1990 at age 12. I didn't know anyone who had ever even attempted to program a computer, so I was completely on my own. I have a good grasp now but remain humbled by the craft (coding every day). Nearly everyone I know now is either where I was twenty years ago or insanely elitist. Still on my own.

I have many authors to thank.

[eitland]

Another relatively young programmer here: born in 80 started but started programming somewhere between 92 and 94 on Commodore 64.

I've been extremely lucky to mostly have worked with mostly ordinary programmers with some extremely good[1] thrown in and luckily even with the brilliant ones all except two of them were also down to earth and nice as well.

[1]: "master of all trades", all-knowing teacher types with "saintly" patience, learns-anything-in-two-hours-and-proceeds-to-fix-hard-bugs-after-lunch

[orionblastar]

I am 52, I started in BASIC programming in 1979. I am currently disabled and unable to work. I am trying to get better so I can become healthier and get back to work.

Programming became a lot easier when Visual BASIC and Delphi came out. Just drag and drop controls.

Due to ageism I am sure I don't fit the culture of a startup or relate to 20 somethings. They hire them young anyway not old. So I do tech support for family and friends to get by.

[hedberg10]

>Due to ageism I am sure I don't fit the culture of a startup or relate to 20 somethings.

Whatever you believe, your brain, like a sentry, will find confirmation for. Be careful with that.

[cutemonster]

And can slightly change how one does and says things, which others can notice, -- to some small extent, can become a self fulfilling prophecy.

(And this can work on in a good way too -- if you say to yourself maybe: I like these people, I like most people, what matters is not age, but if the others are curious and want to learn new things)

Now, of course I do believe that ageism is a thing, still, I'd think there're somewhat many good workplaces that aren't much affected by it

[orionblastar]

I'll keep that in mind. Hope it doesn't end up like The Interns movie.

[rikroots]

While there is a degree of ageism in the industry - avoid companies that advertise their ethos as "work hard and play hard" because having to do most of your office politics half-drunk in the bars after work is not much fun - there are also a lot of people in the industry who genuinely care more about a person's ability to learn and adapt than the date on a birth certificate. Believe in your abilities. Wishing you good health for the future!

[orionblastar]

Thank you, I learned 27 different languages since 1979, most are so old that there are no jobs for them anymore. I used to be a master at Visual BASIC until Dotnet came out.

I can learn any language on the market if I wanted to. I am a quick learner as I have the theories of computer science in my head as I learn.

[rikroots]

My first "paid" gig was winning £50 for submitting a game written in AMOS Basic to an Amiga computer magazine, which got picked as the magazine's "Game of the month". It's still an achievement I'm really proud about.

[cutemonster]

What are your 4? favorite languages? (Among those 27 :-))

[orionblastar]

BASIC, C, Ada, COBOL.

[K0balt]

I’m 53 and started FORTRAN programming in 1975ish on the VAX at my moms work. Bought an Ohio Scientific C2-8P a year or two later with my brother, and that’s when I got into programming games and really started to learn (BASIC) fast foreword 44 years or so, and I’m working in solidity writing contract code in a blockchain startup with a bunch of early 20s guys. They call me dad and are always asking advice on architecture and data structure problems Just closed our first round.

Work on projects, not at jobs...that’s my advice.

[3pt14159]

Wow, that's an even longer time. I started tinkering with code in the late 80s when I got my first computer at 4, then went to college when I was 11. First job at 14. I feel like 30 years of coding is long enough to feel like a long, long time. My pops had punchcards at home from the good ol' days.

I wasn't part of the couple waves of programmers, but I think it is fair to say I was in pretty early. Retying out programs from magazines isn't even something most programmers have considered these days, let alone programming without the internet.

But the essence of your comment is right. Of course there would be people out there that have programmed for twice as long as I have. That's a little frightening to think of.

[danaliv]

> Retyping out programs from magazines isn't even something most programmers have considered these days

Oof, this takes me back to the day I learned about RAM the hard way. I was typing out a program from a magazine. It seemed like it took forever, even then. About halfway through the computer rudely informed me that 4K of RAM is not, in fact, enough for everyone.

[arafalov]

Ha. Soviet magazines were more considering. They listed memory requirements well in advance, when I was learning racing games for my programmable calculator in late 1980s.

[stevesimmons]

Was that a Vic-20? 3583 bytes free, after taking out the 22x23 screen display.

[danaliv]

We have a winner. :)

[tonyarkles]

The memories! POKE 36879!

I learned originally on a VIC-20 by typing in games out of books from the public library. At some point we upgraded to an XT and a friend sold me a copy of Power C for $20. It came with a beautiful hard copy library reference and the rest, as they say, is history!

[gstipi]

Power C! I grew up in Germany and after the inevitable BASIC, C was the second language I learned, using Power C as a compiler, which I ordered by mail and which arrived from the States several weeks later, including the hard copy reference manual you mention. I also remember it came with a rudimentary graphics library I used to create screen savers for friends. Good times.

Check this out for a trip down memory lane: http://www.mixsoftware.com/product/powerc.htm

[AlchemistCamp]

What about the other 7 bytes?

[golergka]

> Retyping out programs from magazines isn't even something most programmers have considered these days

I'm still retyping stuff from stack overflow instead of copying. I find it really effective to really think through the code you're borrowing from somewhere — because once it's committed under your name, you're the one responsible for it.

[stuartd]

The last thing I think I got from SO was an implementation of the Boyer-Moore Algorithm for a byte searcher. I think retyping it would have probably introduced bugs: and as it worked on a test case I had to hand and could verify (finding the data header size in a WAV file by looking for `data` followed by the SubChunk2Size bits, which I could verify with `afinfo`) I was happy to use it rather than learn how the algorithm worked.

As Morpheus said, “Time is always against us”.. so I just made sure it followed our coding standards, checked the test cases, and moved on.

But, I am old enough to remember code listings in magazines. I like to think the typesetters introduced deliberate mistakes because they hated the work so much - not to disrespect the fine profession of typesetters, but when you set your 100th `Poke` command in a row, you might think this isn’t what you signed up for..

[JackFr]

> I'm still retyping stuff from stack overflow instead of copying. I find it really effective to really think through the code you're borrowing from somewhere

Numerical Recipes in C. Had the hard copy but not the disk.

Often the code was just to obscure to work out as you typed, but there was some real value to typing it in. You got some real feel for it. Additionally it offered hard lessons in writing test cases.

[ZephyrBlu]

You went to college, as in university, when you were 11?!

[burkaman]

I was curious too: https://torontolife.com/life/went-college-11/

[ZephyrBlu]

Well that's interesting. I guess he's basically a genius then?

[3pt14159]

Please don't call me that. I really believe any 11 year old could learn what I did with parents like mine.

When I compare the skill involved with something like violin versus the skill that's needed to validate HTML forms with JavaScript or creating an application in Visual Basic, I really do not believe that people that happened to study software at a young age happen to be geniuses just because they did. Yes I'm smart, but I really believe that this path could be open to anyone that age if they have the interest and I think the internet has unlocked many people that have learned the same skills without the credentials.

[nomel]

I used to have this mindset, but then I had a small stroke and lost significant IQ points. I slowly, but never fully, gained them back over two years. I realized that the ease that I saw/see solutions, compared to others, wasn't just related to the time I put into thinking about them. Much of it came for free, in what I can describe as the length and number of the tendrils reaching out to explore whatever "problem space".

I no longer believe that "anyone with an interest" can be at the same level as someone that can just see the answers, with little effort. Some people have fewer/shorter tendrils.

This has definitely changed the way I interact with people. I used to get frustrated when people, who I thought should be able to understand, couldn't. Now I realize that they just can't as easily. They need that picture drawn out for them, and even then, they'll never see the nuances or perceive the textures of the problem, unless you point it out to them.

I think I'm lucky for being born with the mind that I have. It has made my life easy, pulling me out of poverty, with a mostly addictive enjoyment in what I do. I think you're probably luckier than you realize.

[ajfjrbfbf]

From the article:

> everyone seemed to think I was smarter than I believed I was. I feared I might fail miserably and finally prove how wrong they were about me

I can totally relate to that. Once everybody told you you're a genius, the pressure not to fail is incredible.

I started programming at 8. I got next to no help from my parents or my teachers, until the time I entered college, and by that point I felt I knew as much as the professors, sometimes more. I always avoided talking about programming, since that would get a me more genius calls on top of what my grades got me. And it doesn't help with making friends. Over the years I had maybe one or two friends who knew about it. Few would've believe me if I had told them what I could do.

I feel like there's nothing special about the path I took. I feel like anyone would be able to achieve the same knowledge I did given enough work and support. I must have spent thousands of hours programming in my teens. What nobody seem to realize is that the genius label is wrong, what they really should have told me was that I was "passionate". Anyone who is passionate enough can become a master.

[ZephyrBlu]

I don't know what the university courses entailed. I'm basing "genius" on my knowledge of the current Computer Science curriculum. If you were doing CS courses at age 11 I do think you must have genius level intelligence.

If it was more practically-orientated, then I agree with you :).

[ZoomZoomZoom]

Don't know about 3pt14159, but Erik Demaine started university at 12 and completed PhD by 20. So, while it's implausible, it's not impossible either.

[Dowwie]

I'm so glad that you come by Hacker News. What are you doing these days?

[3pt14159]

Thanks for the kind words :)

I'm not really sure what to work on next. I was focussed on arms control for cyberweapons for a while, and I made some real progress, but I want to work on something new now. Maybe finding a way to scale up good things like trust or good will? I want to find something where I'm making the world a better place but also working on something that makes me smile. Trying to fight weapon dispersion is exhausting and discouraging and, ultimately, as I learned, futile.

[physicles]

> Maybe finding a way to scale up good things like trust or good will? I want to find something where I'm making the world a better place but also working on something that makes me smile.

Have you made any progress finding something new to work on?

Maybe I'm projecting here, but I'd imagine this is the dream of most of HN, no? But I don't know which is harder: finding such a unicorn idea, or executing on it once you've found it.

[airstrike]

Wild idea: crowdfunded impact investing through monetized social gaming — plant 10,000 virtual trees and we'll plant one IRL.

[retreatguru]

There are many startups out there with meaningful visions and need experienced devs like yourself.

[bmiller2]

Thank you for trying

[_9omd]

> Maybe finding a way to scale up good things like trust or good will?

Have you considered working in the cryptocurrency space next? I think that would satisfy your desire to find ways to scale up trust. One of the key value propositions of crypto is building trust at scale on the pillars decentralization, cryptography, game theory, and economics.

[matwood]

> Retying out programs from magazines isn't even something most programmers have considered these days, let alone programming without the internet.

Wow. Flashback. I started programming late age wise (college freshman in the 90s), because until that first student loan we didn’t have enough money to buy a computer. I would go to the local bookstore and copy code out of the programming magazines and books. I remember writing some c++ code, bumping into a problem I couldn’t solve and driving to the bookstore to look at the books for a solution.

[wildmanx]

Alright, so you are about 5-10 years younger than me and we started programming at around the same time.

I'd never say of myself that I've been programming "for a long time", let along "a long, long time".

[idiotsecant]

so at what point is your personal gatekeeping threshold met?

[WalterBright]

I started programming in 1974 :-)

[minitoar]

Going to college for programming must mean they are quite young indeed. When did colleges even start offering programming degrees? Unless maybe this is some sort of vocational college.

[Frost1x]

Depending on what is meant by 'programming,' computer science really grew out of mathematics and occasionally physics departments at colleges in the late 50s and early 60s. Disciplines started establishing CS departments in the US around the mid- to late- 60s. I'd say anyone exposed to that period on could be considered as having formal training in "programming" in a college or university environment.

I have a good friend that worked during the 60s era programming with punch cards doing applied physics work in FORTRAN (pre 77) which was already pretty big by then. You could probably go back a bit further but I don't think much was being actively taught as a sort of course one might expect today then. So I'd say you could have at most 65ish years of programming since formal use in college.

No, it was not software engineering at the time per se but I'd absolutely call it programming.

[908B64B197]

Electrical Engineering departments were also starting to offer more and more "programming and computer" related courses as well. At a lot of universities these eventually branched out to become Computer or Software Engineering programs.

[JackFr]

My uncle worked at the National Institutes of Health for about 35 years doing bioinformatics and protein structure modeling. In FORTRAN. Always in FORTRAN. He knew other stuff, but the bulk of his work was always FORTRAN.

[BlueTemplar]

And young people are still learning Fortran today, though it's not the most common language any more, and we tend to learn several different ones.

[mywittyname]

I didn't learn fortran in university, but I did have to learn it for a job. It's still THE language for scientific computing. So in any job in or adjacent to scientific computing, you're bound to run into fortran.

[dragonwriter]

> Going to college for programming must mean they are quite young indeed. When did colleges even start offering programming degrees?

Per Wikipedia, 1953. Coincidentally the same year that RMS—not exactly the youngest programmer around—was born.

But that waa a graduate degree. Undergraduate probably sometime between then and 1962 when Purdue opened the first full CS department, I would assume.

[analog31]

My mom taught programming at the college level in the early 80s, in a computer science department at a state university. At that time, the big universities had computer science departments. The 4 year colleges were more of a hodgepodge, ranging from full blown CS, to a handful of programming courses offered by the math department. By the time I graduated in the mid 80s, CS departments were pretty widespread.

[TheCoelacanth]

Someone who entered college at the start of the dot-com bubble is in their mid 40s, and that's not even when CS degrees were first offered, just when they started entering the public consciousness.

You could easily have a CS degree and be past normal retirement age.

[nullserver]

CS College degrees in dot com era were hit and miss. Also often had a weird mix of electrical engineering courses thrown in.

Was quite common to do 2-3 years then drop out and start a job. So much so that people with degrees were often looked down on. Exceptions for things like MIT.

After year 3, there was nothing left for me to take. So I took a job.

I would like to have a degree, but it was the right call at the time.

Few years ago I went back and started an Art degree. Was a blast.

[ajford]

I'm still holding onto some of my mom's CompSci homework from the early 80s or so. Mostly based on flow diagrams and what amounts to state machines. Sadly no punch cards, though she talked about taking them in to run assignments.

Story goes that she had a campus job cleaning, and made good friends with the guys in charge of running the mainframe by bringing them food and drinks when she stopped by. Which of course meant she could often get them to sneak her stack of cards into the queue overnight.

Details are fuzzy since I last heard the tales over a decade ago, and haven't dug the assignments out in forever.

[musingsole]

Young is relative... Computer science degrees have been available in colleges for 20+ years

[Jtsummers]

20+ is technically correct.

NC State was celebrating 40 years of CS in 2006 or so and they weren't the first. CS degrees have been around since the 1960s, so 50+ years at this point of CS as a separate degree program in the US. Apparently Cambridge offered their first CS degree in 1953.

[chrisco255]

Yes, but they took quite some time to spread to the whole country and to every major university. That didn't really start until the 70s and 80s (in line with when NC State got established).

[uncletaco]

My graduate school's CS department is older than the university it now belongs to.

[astura]

Woah there, I was studying computer science in college 20 years ago and it wasn't even close to a new degree program then.

[zikzak]

Too be fair, when I say 20 years ago I'm thinking "the 80s", then I remember that's wrong and I'm old.

[arethuza]

Manchester University has had a CS department and degree since 1965:

https://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/about/history-and-heritage/

[cmollis]

I switched my major from 'business' (yawn) to comp sci 35 years ago (1986).. at my school, it was previously a 'concentration' in the Math department, which meant you got a BS in Math, concentration in Computer Science. It wasn't a full Bachelors of Science degree until about two years before I got there.

[chrisweekly]

My father (RIP) got his Masters degree in CS-EE from MIT in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

[NotSammyHagar]

I think you are kidding. Even my southern noname university had cs degrees 40 years ago. We had 3, one that was computer engineering, one in arts & sciences, one in the biz college

[jleyank]

Started on a pdp-8/E in 1973 with its staggering 4k of 12-bit memory. "Going to college to program" might have meant going to where the machines were as most of them were on the large size... We had to descend on the college computer centre, which drove the adults nuts. Rugrats running about, fixing their programs for them. Times were different then, but the graduate-to-hacker test was to start with blank paper and end up with a working program. It was too big and too slow, but at the end the new hacker was enlightened.

[astura]

The first computer science degree offered in the US was in 1962. The first in the world was offered in 1953.

[sanderjd]

They probably meant they went to college for something like computer science or computer engineering that includes a ton of classes that involve a lot of programming?

[hsitz]

Or, since he says "pre-teen", it could just be that his parents sent him to a programming class at a local community college when he was twelve years old. That's the sense I get, actually. The number of people who start actual college as a pre-teen is vanishingly small.

[pjmlp]

On my case, you could already get it high school in the mid-80's.

[bobochan]

We had a Pascal class on a VAX in my high school in 1983, and it was fantastic. We used the classic "Oh! Pascal!" text and it was great preparation for college. There was no CS major at the liberal arts school where I ended up, but there were courses with Turbo Pascal taught by the math department before I graduated.

[rikroots]

I first programmed a calculator (well, copy-keyed a hangman game program into a calculator) back in 1980. Passed my 'O' level computing exam in 1983. Started building websites in the last years of the 20th century. Looking back, none of that feels like "programming" to me. I finally started programming when I had a mind-blowing "A-HA!" moment about what Object Oriented programming was all about in 2009 - which made a change from the many, many "wtf" moments I had with non-Basic-like languages before then.

[Jakobeha]

Also not directed towards you, but just because someone has programmed for a long time doesn't been they're particularly good at it. Plenty of people don't learn - it's not even a character flaw, some people just program for the job.