Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

Its fun learning about how other ppl learnt how to program

Ah yes, the stories. I always love these. They tell you allot about a person.

As for me, my parrents bought an acer computer back in the mid 90's. All I ever did with it was play games, but for some reason I was hooked to it. That was when I first started getting interested in computers, but I didn't loose my "verginity" for a while yet. That old acer is still kicking arround though; we gave it to my Grandma back in 2000 I think. It still works over there doing word processing and such. It is part of the reason that me and my mom suppor Acer over anything else. That computer has lasted so long, and is still running.

When the twenty first centery rolled arroud, I started getting interested in web development. I couldn't do shit with it, but I was interested. At that time, I was making half-assed Geocities and freewebs sites. They never ammounted to much, but I always got a sence of accomplishment from them.

A few years later, I started learning HTML. I wasn't far into it when I decided I wanted to go further with programming. I even remember myself posting my own "How Do I Program?" topic here on Newgrounds two or three years ago. I still laugh at that thread. It was thanks to that stupid question though, that I met Dan. I would have to say that I lost my Verginity thanks to him (pun intended). He took me under his wing and taught me everything he could about PHP. After a little bit, Dan came to me and said he wanted to redo MustyWindows code, and asked if I wanted to play a big part in it. I was unsure of myself, but I accepted. I am glad I did to; taking on such a job at my level of experience really boosted my knowledge of the language, and has helped bring me to where I am today.

A year later, we decided to recode MustyWindows again. We had a new layout, and new OOP "framework" neither of us really knew allot about OOP at the time, and the "framework" wasn't really that OOP either, but it was my, and Dans first real taste of it, and we liked it. The code turned out okay. A little sloppy, but okay. We learned allot of new stuff while doing it, and we were prowd of it. I think this was also about the time that Dan recruted our good friend Erwin to assist in coding the site, and as you know he is still a part of the MW staff today.

Another year has gone by, and once again we are recoding. We have learned even more about php, and we just have to redo MW code. ADM has updated to PHP 5, and as much as we love it, it has broken all of our old code. MW is in the worst shape it has ever been in. It seems like every day something that worked a week ago has broken down on us. The development has been slow as hell. Infact, we are really "just starting" to put it into prospective. But I feel this will bring MW to it's feet again, and put it in the best shape it has ever been in. We are using a highly OO framework this time, with a OO base and OO modules. We really have grown to OOP.

As you see allot of my programming past is tightly tied to MustyWindows, Dan, and Erwin. I could not seperate them from my past if I tried. They have helped me so much in my experience, and for that I thank them. They have always been there when I needed them, and I hope they know I am there for them aswell. I don't get to say this enough to you, so I like to say it every chance I get. Thank you. You have both made me what I am today, and you are making me what I will be in the future. Thank you.

That is my PHP past. As for other languages, I have been learning C for a while now. I have been slow at it because of a lack of suitable programs to make in it, but I think in the short future I may start developing a program called SIM. It stands for Secure Instant Messenger. It's main focus is 2-way encrypted direct IM's, with the possibility to generate new encryption keys for seperate conversations, sessions, or whatever you may set. This wont start develpment for a while though, because I have allot on the table to deal with first.

I am also in the midst of learning Java. I have been reading a book for the last month, and although I have not been able to complile programs, I still have a pretty good base in it. I did recently get the JAVA SDK 5(/2) installed, so I have started to actually write stuff in it. I like the language quite a but actually. It is not as slow as people make it out to be. Appearantly it's applets are slow though, and I am not sure about its wedget set. I know the old one used to be slow, but I hear that SWING is allot faster. I will have to see when I use it. I am going to be shortly.

Well, that is my story. It took up almost all of my alloted characters, and I have neglected to mention where I hope to be in the future, because I don't want to have to make a double post. I will just breifly say though that I hope to learn PERL, D, and <another language I forget>. And I am hoping to move into programming networks and such, aswell as developing for Linux when I reach that level.

Once again, that is my story. I hope you enjoyed it. As you can see, I did not start in school, at a library, or any of that normal stuff. I feel my story is a little unique in that aspect.

At 8/14/06 04:26 PM, Craige wrote: "his story"

Wipes tear :'(

Seriously though cool and insperational story.
You'll have to come back to NG in 5 years when your programming for a massive company, and update this small autobiography =)

At 8/14/06 04:33 PM, DannyIsOnFire wrote:

At 8/14/06 04:26 PM, Craige wrote: "his story"

Wipes tear :'(

Seriously though cool and insperational story.
You'll have to come back to NG in 5 years when your programming for a massive company, and update this small autobiography =)

yer, what an epic, it had the highs, the lows, even had a murder or two snuck in there (you need to be very libral about how you read it). Hope all goes well for you!

I had been using computer for a long time but my "virginity" of programming was lost because of a friend of mine.

December 31, 2002 (New Year's Eve) - My friend, Brooke, told me about a website called Neopets.com. She told me that it was a really fun site. I revoked signing up to it, but she eventually convinced me to. After about a week, I was really enjoying the site. After about a month, I was addicted to the game.
As time progressed, I began to learn a lot about the game and found out a lot about computers. On Neopets, I found an HTML tutorial that was for making your own Neopets personal "pet-page". I found HTML very interesting and got really into it. I was quite naive back at that age and wanted to make HTML my career, hehe.

A year or so later, I got out of Neopets and computers in general. I forget why, but for some reason, I got back into computers and I got into Flash and ActionScript, I was hanging around the LegendaryFrog forums because that's what got me into Flash. After a while, I came to Newgrounds where I had had an account (that I made a while before for no reason).

And eventually I've been led up to where I am now.

haha! I was almost to say to you "these threads go to the general forums, and even there they will ban you" haha!

now, my dad was a programmer, and he told me some ProFox when I was 6. I really didnt learned nothing.

Some years later, I had 9 years, I went to a school were they taught LOGO. The class didn't really helped, but I had the better mark of all the class on there. When I was 10, in that programming languaje, I made a pong, probably my first "big" project.

Also, at 12, I buyied a real good book of html, witch helped me a lot.

And years passed. I went on learning LOGO and changed school again at 13. In this new school, there were interschoolar tournaments of C, so I went in and made a course. My dad gived me a good book of C(the Kernigan/Ritchie: The Prograaming languaje C) and, using some knowdeledje from LOGO (variables and all that stuff that all languajes have) had the languaje well understood at the week. Then I competed in the tournament, and I went 3rd of all Argentina (of ALL THE COUNTRY).

Also, that same year, I started using flash and actionscript. IT was very easy, and I made LOTS (30 minimun) of games, but, I dont know why, I never published something to NG.

This year, I learned php and mysql, plus classes and all that C++ stuff. And here I am, like a dumb writing my life into a stupid page

At 8/14/06 04:33 PM, DannyIsOnFire wrote: Wipes tear :'(

Seriously though cool and insperational story.
You'll have to come back to NG in 5 years when your programming for a massive company, and update this small autobiography =)

At 8/14/06 04:48 PM, thecoshman wrote: yer, what an epic, it had the highs, the lows, even had a murder or two snuck in there (you need to be very libral about how you read it). Hope all goes well for you!

Ah, thanks guys. I won't have to come back to NG in 5 years though, because I will never have left, that is provided the comunity doesn't get any worse. This forum has been with me since the begining, I see no reason for me to leave it.

At 8/14/06 06:01 PM, windymager wrote: (the Kernigan/Ritchie: The Prograaming languaje C)

What year was that? K & R C is saposed to be pretty good, but virtually useless after C89, let alone C99 standards. Either way, nice story. It must be nice to have a parrent into programming. I know allot of people here do.

At 8/14/06 06:20 PM, Craige wrote: Ah, thanks guys. I won't have to come back to NG in 5 years though, because I will never have left, that is provided the comunity doesn't get any worse. This forum has been with me since the begining, I see no reason for me to leave it.

That's good to hear. You're story was good also :)

I'm glad everyone is sharing! They really are a lot of fun to read. I was debating whether to make the topic at first, and now I'm glad I did.

Lets here some more!

lolk
When I was about 10 or something (it was 5th grade), I was reading Nick Magazine(lol) and there was an article about these two kids who made Harry Potter fansites or something and at the end of it, it said like "If you want to make your own website, log on to geocities.com!" So I went there and tried to sign up, but I couldn't figure it out. So I searched Google for "make your own website" and saw some hosts, but you had to fork over some dough, so I gave up. I remembered that one of my friends told me that he had a website...

The next day I talked to him and asked him how he made is site and he said freewebs.com. I was so excited when I got home. I turned on the computer and when to freewebs.com and signed up. I thought it was so cool to have my own website.
Next time I went to my friend's house (different friend), I was editing my site and my friend was amazed. His older sister walked by and asked what we were doing. I told her that I was updating my website. She thought it was cool, so I showed her freewebs.

Later that day, she showed us some legendary frog movies on newgrounds. My friend and I loved them so much, that I asked her what the site was. She wouldn't tell us and said "I can't, it has bad stuff on it." I got a glance at the URL, and when I got home, I went to newgrounds, trying to find the LF movies. Couldn't find anything. Being the perverted kid I was, NG seemed to interest me, but then my mom walked in and I immediatly when to google and searched for "Ark and Kerrigan" and it came up with LF.com. So I went there and watched them all and thought they were hilarious. Then I saw the "one ring SE" and LF said something about "I have just gotten flash and" blah blah blah. Since I loved to draw, I wanted to make cartoons like that, and I found out somehow that flash was a software. I was expecting it to be only $30 bucks or something. So I dragged my dad to a lot of stores such as Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. and eventually came to CompUSA and asked a guy there about flash. I was shocked when he said it was about $500 dollars.

On LF's site, I kept getting back to NG and found out that it was pretty cool. My friend and I kept watching all the movies and loved them. On the games page, it said "Got flash? Submit it!" So I clicked and brought me to the submit page. In there, was a link to the flash tutorials. After I read them all, I had a good idea of flash and how it worked, so I downloaded the flash mx 04 trial. When I started to use it and I'm all like "OMFG I USEING FALSH!~~" and learned a little AS. I still had my crappy site and was looking for cool stuff to put on it and all the sites that offered free stuff said "Enter this HTML code" I had NO idea what HTML was, so I googled it and found HTMLDogs.(or dog)com and started to learn a little HTML. After I got a little clue about it, I worked on learning AS. (I'm still not good at it) I'm surprised that I forgot how I drifted into PHP, even though it was more recent than everything else.
So that's my story, and I bet NOBODY read it.

hooray 888 posts

At 8/14/06 06:31 PM, Zwe wrote: So that's my story, and I bet NOBODY read it.

I read it. I bet your dad was surprised when he heard it was $500. I know I would be if I didn't know and just suddenly found that out.

I started at 12 yrs old i think.. Me and my friend was browsing a swedish flash portal and we found these really funny flash movies. Then my friend told me he had flash, so we searched his computer and found flash 5 and started making movies! (The first 5 was only fbf lol). Then we found the documentation about it and some samples so we learned some animation and stuff then a few months later i found out about action script and just played around with it a lot, then 1 year later i found newgrounds and started taking tutorials. Then still at 12 i was pretty good at actionscript, but i found HTML then and learned that and then i just found more and more and learnt them. Still learning some of them. But ye, i started with programming at 12.

At 8/14/06 04:20 AM, DFox2 wrote: Looks like a lot of people learned in school, some got inspired by there TIs.

*Cough* School? *Cough*

My school has never teached me any languages.
About 3 months ago we were doing html in IT, but the teacher wanted us to make a crappy "my first webpage" using a guide with about 99999999 errors.

My school havn't helped one bit in any of my programming, if anything they have slowed it down :(

And my dad never doesn't know any programming languages, so i didn't get inspired by him or anything :/

I wasn't inspired by my school either. My school doesn't even give any sort of computer class until highschool except for Technology which we learn how to use microsoft word >_<

At 8/14/06 07:45 PM, -Jordan- wrote: My school havn't helped one bit in any of my programming, if anything they have slowed it down :(

And my dad never doesn't know any programming languages, so i didn't get inspired by him or anything :/

That sucks.

At 8/14/06 07:50 PM, SpermBurger wrote: I wasn't inspired by my school either. My school doesn't even give any sort of computer class until highschool except for Technology which we learn how to use microsoft word >_<

Haha, we had a class like that also. For me, it was right around when Microsoft Word had the right click spell checker thing. It was like the hottest new thing, and everyone went crazy over it. I look back and it seems really lame now. Yeah.

At 8/14/06 07:50 PM, SpermBurger wrote: I wasn't inspired by my school either. My school doesn't even give any sort of computer class until highschool except for Technology which we learn how to use microsoft word >_<

I hate word, teachers at my school are like:
OPEN UP WORD!11!!!ONE!111
Why can't i design the graphics in flash and use publisher?
BECAUSE I DON'T USE FLASH SO I MIGHT NOT APPROVE TO IT !!!!1!11!!ONE!11ELEVEN!!1111

Well, thats a "bit" exaduated.

Why do all schools use windows? Why can't we try linux or something?

And, my school blocks .bats, .exes, nearly every format you can do something decent with.

And theres more, when i left my computer on with an ftp program running they block ftp connections at school so i can't download my website.

Schools suck, the teachers think they know everything because of a computer course lol.

Started programming in college. Didn't even know why I picked computer science as my major in the first place. Four years and a graduation later, I still have no idea what happened. Only thing I would say I'm decent at is C++ and......errr actionscript.

At 8/14/06 03:38 PM, sacul wrote: Its fun learning about how other ppl learnt how to program

It would be funner to be assured that EVERYone learnt how to spell aswel.l :P

At 8/14/06 08:32 PM, -Jordan- wrote: It would be funner to be assured that EVERYone learnt how to spell aswel.l :P

Jordan, let's not turn this into flame thread.

Your spelling and grammar is anything but sound.

Well, let's see here...sophomore year, I took a Computer Skills 3 class, which taught HTML, basic Javascript, and CSS. I kinda made a site on Sitesled, using Blogger and stuff. I then moved on to Cankoo, where I am currently, and I like coding all my own PHP stuff. Except the forum.

Now, I'm looking at more widespread projects and hosts. w00t.

My story is boring :(

At 8/14/06 08:35 PM, DFox2 wrote: Your spelling and grammar is anything but sound.

Really? Look back through my posts and find any spelling mistakes such as:
ppl, rly and stuff like that.

And sorry, but i do have the occasional typo.

What i was pointing out to sacul, is that its looks n00bish to writ lik dis ppl.

At 8/14/06 09:19 PM, -Jordan- wrote: Really? Look back through my posts and find any spelling mistakes such as:
ppl, rly and stuff like that.

And sorry, but i do have the occasional typo.

Don't worry, it wouldn't be too hard to do. I'm not here to embarrass anyone. If you don't like the way he types, contact him via PM to talk it over.

Started using a computer around age 8, maybe earlier (Apple Mac, probably from around 1990). Got a Windows 95 a few years later, and then got my first good computer when I was 12 (Windows 98, it was a big improvement back then, trust me). I had that one until around September last year when, thanks to all it's loving punishment over the years, finally gave up with continuous blue screens (it was on XP by then).

As for programming, 13. Learnt HTML and dabbled with every programming language I could get my hands on. Created a few decent programs, but was never able to commit to something big for long, so I went back to Web stuff for a while, gradually learning PHP, and noobing it up around these forums.

About a year and a half ago, I was given the opportunity to learn Pascal, and then a few months later to take a course for a qualification 3 years early. I took it, and learnt a hell of a lot from my teacher, a veteran programmer. However, situations meant that I went to another school, and he wasn't around when it came to take my second lot of exams, and I'm expecting to resit one of them, as well as rewriting both of my courseworks.

That's pretty much everything I'm willing to write at this time in the morning.

At 8/14/06 03:36 PM, Pilot-Doofy wrote: When I was 12 I picked up a book on creating powerful websites with PHP. The rest is history.

If I remember correctly, MW was originally in ASP.

At 8/14/06 12:56 PM, DannyIsOnFire wrote: Sorry for off-topicness, but just thought i would let you know Bizzaro, that your site www.howbizarro.org is nearly a year overdue :P

Gee thanks, lol. I actually had everything done, and then decided to completely redo my CMS, usersystem, and news system using OOP amd thats going real slow because I'm lazy as hell over the summer. I get more work done over the school year when I have no time to do stuff...weird huh

At 8/14/06 04:26 PM, Craige wrote: I will just breifly say though that I hope to learn PERL, D, and <another language I forget>.

I really think you should learn the latter, a good place to start is the name, lol

Age 12:

I started Pascal coding about a year or so ago and found it... not fun. So I tried Html and set up a few mega crappy sites = P.

Age 13:

New grade, retarted computer teacher, Flash Actionscript was learned to show his ass up = P.

Age 14:

Wan't to make a kickass site, Attempt (noitice i say attempt) to learn php and mysql.

= P

At 8/14/06 11:10 PM, Bizarro wrote:

At 8/14/06 04:26 PM, Craige wrote: I will just breifly say though that I hope to learn PERL, D, and <another language I forget>.

I really think you should learn the latter, a good place to start is the name, lol

lol, maybe. It has just slipped my mind today.

At 8/14/06 04:26 PM, Craige wrote:

I will just breifly say though that I hope to learn PERL, D, and <another language I forget>.

Dont learn Perl or D. D is just C++ without pointers and perl is just.. well, perl.

At 8/15/06 12:58 AM, -cherries- wrote:

At 8/14/06 04:26 PM, Craige wrote:

I will just breifly say though that I hope to learn PERL, D, and <another language I forget>.

Dont learn Perl or D. D is just C++ without pointers and perl is just.. well, perl.

D is still in development, and I think it may be a useful language to learn (although it sucks that it doesn't have pointers. I didn't know that). Also, Perl is a strong language, and is also one I should learn for refrence. Even if I never write anything substantial in it, it is good to know.

Back in 1997, I learnt how to use Pascal...Oh those were good days!

I'd use the PC for fun and not because I had to use it...And now that I'm E-addicted, I can't stop using it...

I made my first HTML page in 1998, on a Lycos server... I had to write all the HTML code on a Notepad...

I guess you could say that I lost my e-virginity in 1998...

Thanks for the touching words, Craige. I didn't knew whe had so much effect on your career. And from what I've read you've become a proffesional in just a short time.
I really should give you and Dan also credit for my "programming career", because you both have effected me a lot! :)

like 5 years ago