[jseliger]

This is probably going to raise some ire, but am I in the minority of people who are tired of "How I learned to program?" type posts showing up on HN?

You're probably not the only one, but I rather like many of these posts, and I think they're useful for the large minority or small majority of HN readers who don't program. They're also handy encouragement to non-programmers in general: someone says "I could do it," describes how, and perhaps that'll act as an impetus and example.

Sometimes I learn something new from these kinds of posts.