[Ganesh]

For me, a friend of once found ways to change the appearance of member profiles on a social networking site, and ways to inject JavaScript. When he told me, I was like “omg cool!!” So I started learning XHTML/CSS (only took a day or two to fully understand it), and then kept on making templates (and replacing profile backgrounds with repeated) until I got bored and realized it’s pretty limited, so I decided to start on PHP/MySQL which I’m learning now. I’ll do JavaScript after, seeing as though it’s kinda like PHP.

[Adelaid]

i was sitting at my computer thinking “i wish there was some sort of iTunes controller where you could type a song/artist/album and it would just play it, cudnt find one so I took up programming starting with Applescript and made it myself” That was before CoverSutra came out and totally pwn3d me, still I got like over 6000 downloads with the older one and some 3000 with the revamped one

[Adelaid]

the kick start for me was my brother who showed me how to make a website (in a site builder ofc.) at an age of 10. Ever since then, i evolved from site builder to html, css and since a year, PHP. Now i know XHTML/CSS, PHP, a bit of JavaScript, the basics of AJAX, and a bit of action script. Now i’m learning VB.NET at school. It all came fast if u knew that i started using css in websites almost 2 years ago. (i’m 16 now).

[Adan]

Well, for me, it didn’t start out as getting into programming. I’m 25 now, and I started getting into video games when I was 2… it started with the Atari. Then it moved to the NES when I turned 5. By the time I was 8, I knew I wanted to make video games of my own, but I didn’t know how to do it… all I knew was that it had to do with computers. So, I started playing around in DOS on my granddad’s home computer. I taught myself how to navigate DOS in a few short months, and from there just kept learning more and more about OS’s (specifically Windows) until I was 18, when I started college. I took two semesters of C++ programming, and didn’t do to well at it because 1) my grandfather (who was essentially my dad in all aspects with the exception of sperm donation) died in that November, and then the next semester my fiancee had… fidelity issues… on top of which I wound up catching strep throat, which incapacitated me for the last four weeks of that semester. So, I quit community college.

From there, I continued to love video games. For a couple of years, I lived with my best friend in my grandmother’s basement, and we kept dreaming up ideas (mostly delusions of grandeur) while spending our lives working and playing Ultima Online. Then I met my future wife, who I dated for 3 months, moved out with, got her pregnant, and then married after a total of about 9 or 10 months (I had known her for years previously, as a friend). Our first child died, and at that point I was about to join the US Marine Corps… but stayed behind to help her pick up the pieces, which she is still recovering from.

Then, we had a son. Okay, right? Well, still not learning what the meaning of the words “birth” and “control” meant when stuck next to each other in a sentence, she got pregnant with our third child, that would eventually turn out to be our second and only living daughter. It hit me then, in May of 2005, that I needed to do more than work to get by at a fast food restaurant, and I set myself back to work to find a way to make my dreams come alive. I watched a lot of G4 Tech TV at the time, and lo and behold a commercial for Westwood College of Technology: Online flashed its way on-screen. I wound up calling (after discussing it with the wife and shopping around at other colleges) and by August of 2005, I was a Westwood student, with a major in Game Software Development. Along the way I’ve learned how to work in UNIX/Linux, how to do cross platform game programming, how to program in C# and C++, how to use DirectX, OpenGL and SDL, and I’ve learned how to utilize my knowledge of these languages to create applications (specifically, games) in an object-oriented manner. I have also learned about artificial intelligence, algorithm analysis/design, UML, the Software Development Life Cycle and its effects on programming, and I am currently taking a class on compiler and interpreter design. I am slated to graduate in October of 2008… and from there? Who knows. That part of my story has yet to be written

[Amit]

I started by HTML innfact i suck at it now, i used to be uber html coder, then i started PHP witch i still do, then i started modding a game called battlefield 1942, witch is my most favorite game of all time, then i wanted to learn c++ so i was given a book, at the beginning of this year, and im a quarter through it, its better than class cause u can do when u want Razz, but im not even a quarter and i wrote, in 3 minuts, an app that spells entered words backwards, and in 2 minuts a program that counts down from a number you enter, if you want code for eather of thses, im willing to give them, just PM me and i will freely send them to you