I wanted to write a minecraft mod. I have never written a minecraft mod but I got interested in actually learning to program after I realized I had no idea what I was doing. Also english and computer science where the only 2 subjects in school I was pretty good at

It started with typing in BASIC code out of magazines. Used an Apple II those days. I missed the step going into pascal, C etc and stuck with basic syntax more or less my whole life. Not spagetti code anymore but still some BASIC derivates. B4X is what I use on Android now to create native APK.

Also I love IDEs with an integrated graphical interface designer. VB6 was my thing.

Over the years I used assembler, sql, bash also but always as tools to get my hardware to do what I need. The software I wrote was/is for my own convenience at work and in private. Written for PC and Android.

I tried to go commercial one time but the lawyer I talked to shattered my dreams because of insurance requirements when you write software used in peoples air transport business. If something goes wrong you really have a problem.

My Android software uses databases filled with scraped data so can’t make them official as well. The royalty fees to pay if I try the official route kills every attempt before starting.

So it’s still a hobby, very satisfying but not more.

Edit: scraped not scrapped , LoL

My father, as a sysadmin with some coding knowledge, got me my first PC, some old tower with a GT 210. I was probably ~5 yo. After moving to a new house (for the fifth time), I got another PC, I think. This one was even older, but with Ubuntu Server it ran perfectly. My father taught me the basics, so cd, mv, nano and init, as we set up a minecraft server together.
A few christmases after that I got a new PC, the old one was promoted to a server and the old server was sorted out (in retrospect, keeping the floppy drive in there would’ve been kinda cool). Then a Pi was welcomed into the room, yet another server, as the old/new one broke, came too, this time it was a HP Mini Tower thingy. A Raspberry pi zero w for testing and stuff got here too.
But since I got the first server, I learned bash, ofc. Through Minecraft I got to Java, vanilla gets pretty boring after some time. Some time after, I decided to switch to Linux fully (I only dual booted Kali (and before someone starts to scream: I actually needed it)), as Windows kept getting buggier and shittier, I chose Pop as a daily driver. This screamed for custom scripting, so Python came to mind. At the same time I was interested in C# and learned it on my phone, because why not.
One or one and a half years ago I got sucked into depression even deeper, so I switched to my love, always, Arch. Going along was the desire to learn something even nerdier, so C/C++. I’m confident to say that I’m good in python, and OK in C#, so why not. Now I even program things sending and parsing web requests in C++, because speed.

TL;DR:
Strong personal interest since I was 10 through Minecraft (Java), Linux (Python), random other languages (C#, Ruby) and speedy languages (C/C++).

Now I see classmates, 18 years old, and of generation TikTok aka. “I press that button and there are pictures now” trying to learn programming. Fine, I guess, but they lack the most basic skill of all: Acquiring knowledge. Every answer needs to be prepared for them, everything else is inquired from ChatGPT.

I think I was 11 or 12 when I started plaxing Tibia (a very early MMORPG). I really enjoyed it. At some point I found out that somebody has leaked the source code. You could host your own Tibia server. You could create new map segments or introduce new quests by Lua scripting. There was a huge community for “Open Tibia”, hundreds of servers with thousands of players. First, I got into mapping, then I got into scripting and loved it.