Thanks a lot Luke ^o), that's your Christmas card out of the window, anyhow, here' goes.
1. How old were you when you started programming?
Uhm, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure - my father was a bit of a computer enthusiast himself, so we always had a machine around that I played about with, but I guess I first got really interested in programming when I got my own 80286 which would have made me about 10ish.
2. How did you get started in programming?
I got two main starts really. Shortly after getting the aforementioned 286; I picked up a kids book containing a load of BASIC programs in it from a boot fair, unfortunately none of them were written in GW-BASIC so I had to do a lot of modifying to get them to work and I guess that in itself taught me a lot.
But the thing that really got me going was getting a copy of VB4 Standard Edition for my 12th (I think) birthday. That, a copy of "Visual Basic 4 for Windows for Dummies", and a lot of articles from computer magazines got me really fired up about development. There's just something about seeing a machine doing what you tell it to; that never quite gets dull - especially when said computer can be hundreds of miles away and you can bring robots into the mix. It's not a God complex though. Much. Anyway, moving swiftly on...
3. What was your first language?
GW-Basic, I've still got the floppys around here somewhere.
4. What was the first real program that you wrote?
A notepad clone- when I was about 13 I got bored at the lack of anything technological at school (at the risk of annoying a load of people, they used Acorns, and I was pretty much a PC guy), so my parents got me enrolled at the local college doing some Cambridge IT certificate module thingymabob, it was pretty good fun, although my work did get plagiarised which taught me a few lessons about life a little earlier than I might have wanted.
The program was written in VB3 which was alright, but lacking a load of functionality, so I got pretty heavily involved with calling into the Windows API from VB which I probably enjoyed a lot more then than I do now :-)
5. What languages have you used since you started programming?
Ouch, uhm, a few, the ones I use professionally at the moment are VB.NET, C#, and a little bit of C++ here and there, but I've used quite a few through academia and personal playing - MSIL, Old School VB, ASP, C, Pascal & Delphi, CAML, PHP, MASM & NASM Assembler to name some, I'm sure there are others, and I won't even bother trying to list dialects of BASIC.
6. What was your first programming gig?
I did some work experience with a SolidWorks Reseller called SolidBase when I was maybe 15, which basically involved a lot of spreadsheet to database conversion using VB6. Shortly after that I found myself working on DriveWorks 3, and I've ended up working for DriveWorks throughout the remainder of my education doing bits and pieces until last year or so ago when I finished University and came to work for DriveWorks full time where I now head up our development efforts.
7. If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?
Are you joking? If I knew then what I know now, then by now, I'd be writing even better code ;-)
8. If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
Never stop playing - programming is a fun and enjoyable activity, the minute you forget that; you'll burn out. So make sure you make time to sit down with new technologies and fiddle.
Seeing as this is a meme, and I'll anger the Internet Gods if I don't continue it, I'm tagging Glen Smith, Jeff Read, Ben Hall, and Boris Shoov (I can but try ;-))
P.S. Can you believe that "thingymabob" isn't in Windows Live Writer's spell checker? for shame.
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