How long have you been programming for?

This question has just been in my mind for ages, How long does it take to become a Pro flash programmer? I know It is kind of dumb, but to think of what I will I be making in the next 4 years or so, makes me soooo excited!

Please leave a comment on how long you have been programming and what age you started :)

About 7 years. I started in high school and have achieved nothing with it :p

lol really :P

My first “Hello World” type program was on my brother’s Apple IIe, so… 24 years? :P

5 years or so since I was 10, but only flash for the last year

I started by making IRC bots when I was 15/16 (27 now). I finished a programming degree 6 years ago (which I really shouldn’t have done – I’m not the computer science type) and have been using AS3 for the last 4-5 years, ‘seriously’ for just over a year.

In Denmark we have 10 years of ‘public school’, then I moved on to the Technical Gymnasium for 3 years, where I on the 3rd year took a VB.NET programming class. First and ever only class where I achieved to get straight A’s. I graduated with my Pokémon / Dragon Quest inspired RPG made in VB.net… While my friends made tic tac toe and similar xD

Then in the summer I started on AS3 and at university which I started at fall I was lucky enough to realize that we had to use AS3 for the first year :P

I’ll have to learn C++ the next couple of semesters though. (I’m taking a bachelor degree in Medialogy)

So I’ve been programming for around 2 years now… Only on a hobby level though.

Originally posted by Aaants: I’m not the computer science type

You’re always making the best stuff in the contests though

Originally posted by ErlendHL:

Originally posted by Aaants: I’m not the computer science type

You’re always making the best stuff in the contests though

‘Always’ is a bit strong – there’s only been 1! :) (and, to be honest, vesperbot’s trees were nicer than mine)

I like digital media (using computers in general), I just don’t particularly care about how they work. You need to have an interest in stuff like that to be a ‘real’ programmer. Learning about assembly and the like bored me to sleep in my lectures. I’ve all but forgotten it now.

Originally posted by jexia:

My first “Hello World” type program was on my brother’s Apple IIe, so… 24 years? :P

I was thinking I started in college, but that’s untrue. I started back in high school with my TI-83+

God, how long ago was that? 12 years? Huh.

I’ve been programming for about 2 years now, but with school and life and all, I don’t program much. I program around 2 hours a day.

Makes me feel better that I’ve been programming for about half a year and have almost completed my first semi-decent, but full of bugs, simple game.

I’ve been programming for Approx. 2 years, AS3 is not my very first language but I like to use and learn about it more and more. That’s why I’ve been in this community for so long. :) I don’t get enough time to program my ideas, though.

Years and years … but Flash is only a small time hobby thing for me.

I think my first time was way back in like the 5th or 6th (I don’t remember, it was a LONG ass time ago—1990s or so) grade. A friend of mine had a commodore 128, and we’d mess around with programming random crap on it. From then on, I screwed around with Apple IIe basic, and then qbasic after that, but this still was just some kid coding junk for fun. (In my defense, I sort of had a RPG battle system going in qbasic, but it was really, really, really horrible)

Then I went to college for a computer science degree, but I dropped out because I was both immature and, to be honest, years of screwing around with ancient programming languages made it somewhat difficult for me to understand the OOP concepts they were teaching in college. (Or maybe they just sucked at teaching the material.) Years went by and I worked shit jobs like a loser and eventually, a game called Neverwinter Nights came out. I grabbed it, played it, and it wasn’t long before I got into its toolset. Part of its toolset involved a scripting language similar to Java, and after working with it for awhile, OOP finally made sense to me. Then, in 2007, I went back to school for a programming degree, steamrolled it, but even though I left with a 4.0, I couldn’t find decent work thanks to our shitty economic state, so I figured I’d teach myself Flash (I went to school mainly for web development, so it seemed like a useful skill to add).

In early/mid 2010, I picked up an older-than-dirt copy of Flash (Flash 8 Pro, LOL) at a garage sale, exhumed an ancient tome on using it from the library, and then struggled through its instruction for quite awhile. Eventually, I found my way here and realized something. “OMG I can make games with Flash!?” After finding that out, I stopped looking at it as a tool to add to a web developer’s portfolio and changed gears entirely. I wanted to make games ever since I was a kid, but thought it was way out of my league. Now, I’m finishing up what I think should be a pretty decent game. :)

Yeah, I know. COOL STORY BRO! Even still, I figured it might be interesting to paint a full picture of a random person’s trip into the world of programming.

@Aesica

That is a cool story, I wish I got to learn some programming when I was in 6th grade. :S Now I feel when I do a game design course next year that due to having almost NO prior programming experience, I am going to fail :/ Seems so intensive.

If anything, that programming I learned (taught myself, more like) back then was detrimental to understanding modern OOP practices. NWScript was the first useful bit of programming I got into in that regard; everything before that was crap. (NWN was around 2002)

About 2 years, and I just might be managing to level up from the rank of half-noob.

pro
???
half-noob
noob

1.5 years. I started with AS2 when my school had it. When it was removed, I got Flash CS5 and learnt AS3. Since I’m still in school I don’t get much time to program. :(

All these stories are a fun read :)

I used to be a non-coder like you. Then I took a C++ book from the library.

C++ : You have no class
C : Okay

I started dabbling in AS2 in 6th grade (I’m graduating high school in a few days), but I didn’t get too heavy in code until maybe 8th or so when I picked up the O’Reiley AS3 book. Summer before sophomore year I learned perl, then Java in the summer before junior year. In the last year I have picked up python and have been dabling in C++ although I still love AS3 mostly due to the ease of distribution that is possible with Flash. Going into Computer Engineering next year so I’m gonna be learning Assembly, C++ for sure, and gonna probably have to pick up matlab.

So I guess I started 6 years ago, not getting serious until about 4 years ago.

2 years seriously.
than about 3 where I’d work at it maybe once a week to once a month. I got almost no where very quickly. But I did become familiar with Adobe Flash, I guuuuess thats a bonus. That and was a little more familiar with the syntax.

About 5 years?
Started out with GameMaker. Used GameMaker’s drag & drop system for a little bit, then moved on to GML (GameMaker’s programming language). Got pretty good with that and made some pretty good games in GM. Eventually came to my senses and switched to Flash about 3 years ago because I wanted more people to appreciate my work. Learned AS2 from the Shootorials and eventually moved on to AS3. I also started learning Objective-C 2 years ago.
I like many of my fellow Kongregators, am extremely lazy and nonchalant when it comes to finishing projects, and I haven’t completed any of the 10+ projects I’ve started in the last year or so!