How old were you when you first started programming?

I was about 12 years old. That combined with my love of Nintendo really makes it sound like I never left the house, but I found time to play sports and get in trouble, really… …

How did you get started in programming?

A mysterious friend of mine (Jim MacDonald, who all but doesn’t exist online) and I used to play games all day, like Dragon Warrior and Shining Force. Then one day he wondered how games were made, and found…

What was your first language?

QBASIC! This has gotta be the easiest language to learn, and that says a lot in an age where PHP exists. I think more developers would benefit from starting with this fantastically simple language.

What was the first real program you wrote?

I wrote a program I simply called Dragon, which was a direct ripoff of Jim’s game Wizard or something. It used QBASIC’s DRAW commands to draw shapes and PLAY for sound effects. It was a single-battle, turn-based game pitting you (a knight) against a dragon. It was amazingly bad but pretty fun (for 12-year-olds anyway).

What languages have you used since you started programming?

Professionally: Only PHP and JavaScript

For fun and/or school: BASIC, C, C++, Perl, Python, QBASIC, Turbo Pascal, Visual BASIC

What was your first professional programming gig?

Working for Dav Glass at SchoolCenter. I was a PHP programmer making a measly $10/hour coding content management tools for K-12 schools. I was quickly promoted to lead designer (odd, right?), then when the company realized we needed engineers more than designers, put back into the development department. About a year after Dav moved to Yahoo!, I followed.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

Oh hell yes. I’m always trying to learn as much as I can. Learning new languages is fascinating, and learning more about what you already are familiar with to me should be a daily exercise. If I had had the knowledge I have now when I was younger, I can’t imagine what I would have built by now. Interesting to think about!

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

In a normal curriculum in school, students are taught to read well before they are taught to write. I’m not sure why this isn’t the case in programming. You’ve always got these wannabe developers that try to run before they can walk, and they end up tripping. There’s no shame in beginning modestly.

I recommend to anyone of any programming level: read other people’s code. The Internet is the ideal place to learn.

What’s the most fun you’ve ever had… programming?

Everytime I learn a new language, my first task is to build a game. I’ve been doing this for over a decade, in every single language I’ve dabbled in. But I think it was the most fun in QBASIC. I built an intentionally awful game called Seanbaby’s Magic Bus Ride Trip for you guessed it… Seanbaby. Working in Flash is really fun too, but nothing beats JavaScript.

Who’s next?

Let’s go with Isaac Schlueter, since he’s a great writer and always has interesting things to say!