Actually sometimes I try to actually be serious and you take it as a joke and then bash me.

To be honest, I wish young people stop programming apart from few because if Software Engineering becomes too filled up this will result in finding Jobs becoming ever so hard so such sectors should remain only for the really intelligent people.

well i certainly dont want competition but if there was lots only the best programmers would be successful, therefore you would have your misguided dream of having only the most intelligent programmers.

I wonder about strict programming conventions like java has, people like Einstein and Nicola Tesla were extra good in their field because they had original approaches, a factory made programmer isn't going to be any different than another

With the crippling shortage of good programmers that the industry is experiencing today, every little bit helps.

To the original post:

First hello world: BASIC, around the age of 6, then forgot everything, then again hello world around the age of 11.
First non-trivial program: Delphi, age 14-15.
First serious programming project as a project owner/leader: C++, age 26-27 until now (31; will continue working on the project probably until I die).
First serious project where I am NOT the project owner/leader: LaTeX with embedded postscript programming, age 30-?.

^in that case i made a batch file that printed "TONY IS GAY" at 5.

@Fredbill30
That is impressive considering most kids at 5 can't read and have no clue what gay means.

My sister teached me to read while I was 4, so it's kinda possible.
Yet I didn't know what gay meant, back then.

Yeah taught you to read when you were 4, but understanding batch and knowing how to do that at 5? I think psychology says your attention span is a matter of a few seconds to a few minutes almost until your teens. Though, this could be argued as being proven by referencing devonrevnge's and Fredbill30's posts in most of the threads.

I was writing genetic code from the moment of conception, it's in my DNA.

i looked on a cmd tutorial and then redid the hello world tutorial.

Anything other than that was... foreign.

Anywho I did know gay meant liking guys. BTW Tony is my brother so I naturally have to make fun of him.

Im still in my early days lol. I started looking at programming when I was 12 or 13 and learned a little c++ syntax. I didn't actually start until 15 though, which was just last year >_<. I mostly do c++, I work with java also but I enjoy c++ more. (Can't say too much lest I faceth the might of rapidcoder :) ) I'd like to say I've done quite well in my small amount of time but I also know basic psychology and wont be too quick to pat myself on the back. Thats one thing I love about you guys, you all have much higher expectations of our generation :) Honestly though I've seen some other kids my age brag about how fast they learn syntax (which usually isn't hard) then fail at applying it. When someone tells me that orogramming is easy I think either they aren't really programming or they are a hell of a lot smarter than me (And I've never been called dumb)

BHXSpecter wrote:
Though, this could be argued as being proven by referencing devonrevnge's and Fredbill30's posts in most of the threads.

Lol.

Austin J wrote:
Im still in my early days lol. I started looking at programming when I was 12 or 13 and learned a little c++ syntax. I didn't actually start until 15 though, ...(To see the rest of this post look right above your nose)

It's all good.
I began programming at 14 or 15, so you're probably following my learning path (Besides different "available time" in a day, probably).
You will be probably able to learn a lot of it within the first two years, they're probably the most important years of learning as you'll learn the bones of the language.
This won't mean you will learn important things too after those years.
Oh well, I'm being kinda repetitive...
Who cares, I like to see other opinions from people all around the world and talk about that.

Good luck to everyone who begins, and, go make us more tools to use!

I began at 15 during my school vacation. Presently I am 18 so that's 3 years ago. :)

I started programming when I was about 9. The first few months was very little of programming cause I just didn't have the motivation to do it. About age 11 I started seeing codingmadeeasy's (youtube.com/codingmadeeasy) tutorials and it really got me going. Today I'm still 11 and I'm writing my own game, which I expect to be ready for Xmas so I can offer it to someone.