First computer I had was a C64. I have vague memories of writing a few programs in BASIC, but mostly I used it for playing games. It wasn't until I had a 286 in high school and I got a copy of Pascal that I really learned to code. Then I found a copy of K&R's C book. That pretty much hooked me forever.

First computer that I ever touched was actually the IBM PC when I was about 12, I just started hacking away as soon as I flipped on the power switch. Wanted to know how things works, and how to get this machine to do what I wanted it to do immediately!

my dad bought me an old Atari 400 (membrane keyboard & 16KB of RAM) in '83. He wouldn't buy me any games so if i wanted it to do anything i had to program it myself, hence an early introduction to BASIC programming...

"you bring up Delphi, of course Pascal comes to mind" makes me think of those "If you give a mouse a cookie..." books (is that reference only valid to parents of small children?).

My first contact with computers was back in '87 when my 'rents bought me an Amstrad CPC6128 with embodied Basic 1.1. As the years passed by, though, I messed with some commands I couldn't understand, then some games didn't work and the disk drive doesn't read or write on disks anymore.

It all started from me as a hobby and then turned into a way of life and profession.

I took a programming course in 11th grade on TI-80's, then moved half way through the quarter. Took it up again my senior with a BASIC programming course on Apple II's. My final project was a game - craps. I used the Apple vector graphics stuff to draw out tumbling dice - it was way beyond what was required. I only got an A minus because I didn't account for negative bets, so my teacher was able to bet a negative number, lose, and still gain money. My parents then bought me an Atari 800XL to take to college.

Sort of scary that I remember that much about one silly program almost 20 years later...

My first that I owned was a Vic 20 - the first that I used was an Apple //e and I had an Atari VCS/2600 the first year it came out. Of course, this ties into the book that I'm about to publish... "Memoirs of an Italian Geek". :)

my first computer was a TI computer with a tape drive that i used to write childish "choose your own adventures" text programs in basic on. but i really didn't do much computing until i got into college and also programmed in pascal (mac pascal no less!) in my intro programming course. next thing i knew, i had an English degree.

Ha. If one person could lift it, it wasn't a computer.

Not the first computer I ever used, but the first I loved: The English Electric KDF9.

http://www.leo-computers.org.uk/images/kdf9.jpg

Zero-address stack based machine, 32Kwords of core (48-bit word, word-addressed, special instructions to treat a word as six 8-bit syllables). Used it at Leeds Uinversity where a homebrew OS, Eldon2, supported 32 online terminals.

Here's a picture of the nesting store ("stack" in American).

http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/old/events/anniversaries/40th/images/kdf9/08.jpg

I concur with the "this is what I want to do" feeling. I was a programmer immediately that I'd written my first 50 line program.

Uh, it was in BASIC if you really need to know.

"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." -- E.W.Dijkstra, 1930 - 2002.

I remember the first time I saw a computer -- a ZX81 on-stage at a "science talks for kids" event in Dublin, when I was 11 (I was that geeky ;).

ZX81, of course, because those Apple IIs were too expensive to ship over from the US, so the Sinclairs hit just the right price-point for a generation of eurokids.

Man, I was excited; myself and about 20 other kids crowded around the ZX when the talk ended, going "woo", and refusing to go home. I *had* to have one.

And in those days, what you did with these things was learn to program BASIC, as games were hard to get hold of -- unless you typed them in from the magazines. I got right into it, and totally hooked after the old reliable: 10 PRINT "JUSTIN IS COOL" 20 GOTO 10 ;)

The Vic 20 was next, with its programmable character sets and 8 colours, then the C-64 -- did some serious hacking on *that* platform, and I'm still pissed I can't get copies of my old demos -- and then, eventually... UNIX. I'm still stuck on that one ;)

My native country is Rodrigues, a tiny island next to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. In 1985, my primary school teacher visited Australia and when he came back, I listened with amazement as he talked about these things called computers that he saw in Australia. He explained how kids were making animations with these, how everything was done on them, and so on. Back then, in the 35,000-strong population of Rodrigues, almost no one had seen, if not heard, about computers. So, at that exact time as my teacher -- I was his favourite -- explained the marvels of computers, I knew that I wanted to work with these.

I had to wait until 1991 to get my first PC, a Sanyo MBC 16LX 8088. It came with a single 5.25" floppy drive and an MS-DOS 3.2 (not even 3.3) disk and a GW-Basic disk. So GW-Basic was my first language. Later,I got in touch with a friend and we wrote a couple of small utilities together in Pascal, the first one being an access program that launched when the computer was booted and asked for a password. Then, I learned QBasic 4.5, DBase III, FoxPro 2.x, Delphi, MS Access, Visual Basic, Magic, SQL, ASP, C++, PHP, Java, and Python.

Would have been around 1982, I was 4 years old or so and my Dad brought a Commodor PET-like machine home from his school (he's a teacher here in the UK). I think you could say it was love at first sight :)

After that it was ZX81, Spectrums, BBC Micros, Archimedes, Atari ST, Windows PC and finally settling on Macs last year. Programming pretty much happened straight away, and I've covered a myriad of languages including C, C++, Assembler (68k and ARM are my strongest, but also Z80, 6502 and x86), Java, c#, BASIC (Sinclair and BBC and Visual).I have to say my favourite language is C++ closely followed by 68K Assembler. Sorry Kasia but I can't abide Java -- its far too restrictive and its one file for a class syntax is horrid compared to the .cpp/.h of C++

I'm always glad I didn't just start out programming on a PC or Mac, as I'm certain that my exposure to older hardware gave me a greater understanding of how to program than coming to it a fresh with the rich libraries and OS apis we have today. (But then I'm just a hacker at heart -- I'm still trying to work out where I can use Duff's device in my current program :)

I consider myself to be a member of the last generation that didn't use windows on their first computer. When I was 3 we had a Xerox 16/8 which I played games on. It was all command line. None of that fake GUI stuff that we use nowadays. Then in 92 we upgraded to a 486. I remember going with my dad to UPS to pick it up since he wasn't home when they tried to deliver it. It ran Microsoft Windows 3.1, and later Windows 3.11 for Workgroups (I still have the floppy disks in my closet). I basically spent lots of time with computers learning everything I could. Never really thought or did any programming until a couple years ago.

First I learned HTML. Taught myself from the HTML Goodies book in one day. Then learned about CSS and spent some time with Javascript (although I havne't used Javascript in a long time, so its all gone from my brain). I started to C++, and even made a few programs, but somehow got sidetracked by this Linux thing thanks to a group of people at some seocnd rate DSL website...;-) So that's what I've been doing for quite a while now. Although I did get bored in math class one day and taught myself how to make some Basic programs in TI-BASIC on my TI-83.

IBM Basic on original PC learned by going through the "Green Book" one function at a time. Then Turbo Pascal. Details at http://www.johnsjottings.com/archives/2003/06/02/newly_digital.html

My first contact was an Atari 2600, and I loved that thing! My first own computer was a C64, followed by an Amiga 500 (including second disk drive and a huge amount of RAM - one MB). First x86 was a 486/DX4-80 running OS/2 Warp (which was replaced by WfW 3.11 after some days), and that was the time when I got more interested in "how does this work". Did batch "programming", then Pascal, then I learned a good language. Perl.

Oddly enough, the first computer I ever used was an IBM System/36. I moved to PCs afterwards.

Honestly, I used to hate computers. My first exposure was to TRS-DOS and the ugly green screen used to make me sick. Time went on and my company 'upgraded' to an orange screen! I was in DOS land! But, down the hall in the billing office for the radio station was a new 'blue' screen and it was there I fell in love with Unix. XSoldier or something close to it could be played while they printed invoices!

I originally got into programming to try and make the radio station more efficient - why did we waste so much paper? Why couldn't the sales manager write a commercial and allow us to modify it without typing it again? The more I got into it the more I loved it and now do radio part time and computers full time :)

My first computer was a pre-DOS computer that my private school bought because they thought we could learn something from it, but nobody could figure out what it did. That was about 1977. My best friend and I started plying with it, and learned to program it to some extent. The day before I graduated from high school, I learned the hard way that playing with the hardware inside the box was harder than playing with the software, so I am sure nobody every used that computer again. After that, I was on to an IBM machine that only did APL, and had a huge APL keyboard, and a whirlwind of Pascal, Forth, PL/1, Fortran, Lisp, etc. etc. There was no turning back, but I am still death to any computer that I open up. Purely a software man.

Hi Kasia,

well I think we had both the same or nearly the same) computer: An Atari 8 Bit Machine. I think it could be Atari 400, 800, 400XL or 800XL. Have a look here: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=460
This was my old machine, but I think you will find yours in the Atari section for sure.

I've read some of your Java-articles. I like them a lot. Ever considered to write a java book? I like your style of writing. Perhaps your female view of it would make it a good book espeacially for women. Not only of course :)

Funny, my ex-wife's name is Kasia, too. But she wasn't a geek. Well, to be honest she hated my computer. I've learned a bit polish then and I like this language - you can talk so cute as maybe in no other language. So don't be bothered by your accent.

Pa pa, na raze.

My first computer was purchased when my wife and I were recently married, had one child and another soon on the way, and I finally wore her down and spent essentially all of our savings on an Atari 800 (I did not want the 400 because of the nasty keyboard, so I had to save a little longer;)).

When I got it (no hard drive, no floppy, only a nasty cassette tape drive) I felt like Jack who has sold the family cow to purchase beans. Fortunately, a beanstalk did indeed grow, and today (as for the last almost 20 years) I support myself and my family programming computers. I love what I do, and were I independently wealthy, I would continue doing it (though likely for non-profits, of for corporations and then donate the money).