I was 11 or 12. I learned the really hard way. I was in Norway for a month and I only had an old 486 at my disposal, a hex editor and some Sega Megadrive games and an emulator (the Megadrive uses a Motorola 68000 processor)
I was curious how the games worked so I started hex editing them at random, seeing what would happen if I changed this and that, etc.
Long story short I learned to write programs in 68000 machine code (binary) and recognize patterns in ROMs (music, art, code). I still remember how to code simple things in machine code.
Imagine my joy when I discovered assemblers, and after that, compilers a while later :)
I didn't start until I was 25, after doing an undergrad in english and a master's in a completely non-technical field. I didn't really think I could become a "real" programmer just that I could learn enough to automate some things. I loved it and also the CS side of things, I kept working at it and now I'm working on my master's in CS, have built quite a good number of sophisticated applications that I'm proud of and am really surprised at how far I've been able to come.
The biggest lesson in all this for me: all of that skill is just a function of time and practice stuff? surprisingly true. I didn't think I could ever do something like build a complier, but after going home and practicing everyday and reading constantly I got there.
The additional lesson is that this method can be applied to most anything. Want to pick up and instrument? Learn a foreign language? Learn math? do it! I meet so many people who say "oh I could never be good at X", you can. And if it takes 10,000 hours/10 years to be an expert, it probably only takes 1000 hours/1 year to become intermediate, which is good enough to have a lot fun with something.
Learning is the single most amazing thing a human can do, so don't stop
Sorry for the late reply (was a bit busy today), wanting to preserve a bit of my anonymity, I essentially found a position fusing both my previous master's subject area and my programming skills (in academia). Since it actually pays less then a regular development gig I've toyed around with changing careers, but it has other perks (flexibility, freedom, a nice office etc).
Oh no it's fine on the lateness. I'm 31 and have only recently (~1 year) started coding with vigor. I am debating whether to leave my career in PR completely or use my expanded skills to move into a related field, vice completely moving to software development.
Funny, my first was similar, in Apple ][ BASIC. When I was in 7th grade, a friend (still to this day) and I had a typing class which used Apple ][s. One day we had a substitute teacher in who knew absolutely nothing about computers. I decided it would be funny to prank her so I wrote something like:
10 PRINT "GOVERNMENT ACCESS ONLY: THE FBI HAS BEEN CONTACTED"
20 FLASH
30 GOTO 10
I called her over with a worried face and said "I don't know what happened!" I could see her heart skip a beat as her eyes bugged out.
We quickly started snickering and admitted it was just a joke. She laughed it off and was a good sport about it.
10 FOR I = 1 to 100
20 PRINT "I WILL NOT SPEAK OUT OF TURN IN CLASS. I WILL FOLLOW CLASS RULES"
30 NEXT I
"That is fantastic that you can type all of that out on your typewrite Michael. Well done."
(The concept of Dot Matrix wasn't even well known initially and perhaps bad lenses).
Same here - I was influenced in my first BASIC program by the Wargames movie and "Firefox" (Clint Eastwood, not Mozilla) and had a password protected diagram of an ascii uber figher jet.
yeah those c-64's were a lot of fun, but man I must have had 2-3 die on me so I ended up on Atari 400 (eventually when I could buy the 800 I upgraded).
Star Raiders in an emu is still pretty incredible.
I started early but slow - a friend had a Commodore 64 and we were writing simple BASIC programs at about 7, and another friend had an MS-DOS system with QBASIC. Slightly after then, my family got a Windows 3.1 based home computer, and I used to log on to BBSes and download other people's QBASIC code as well as writing simple (non-graphical) menu systems and the like. I then learned x86 assembler and began writing programs that combined QBASIC and x86 assembler. I also had some exposure to C via the compiler built into a 2D DOS-based graphics package my father used for work.
Around 1996, the family computer got Windows 95, and HotJava came out, and I got hold of the JDK (a very big download on a modem - I had to wait all night), and I learned Java and made a few applets. I also got a Visual Basic CD that came with a book about it. About a year later, I was able to set it up as a dual boot system, and installed Linux, giving me easier access to gcc, and I learned C. I also learned to audit code for security bugs and found a few in popular IRC daemons - after reporting them to the developers, I ended up becoming a regular contributor to the development of several ircds.
I got my first paid programming job on my 15th birthday (after applying to lots of places), for a lawyer who was running a software business on the side, developing native Windows apps.
I got a C64 for Christmas but then-surprisingly the reading-head of the bundled datassette player wasn't properly tuned and thus I couldn't load and play more than a limited few of all the games that came with the C64.
A translated version of the C64 user's guide / BASIC programming manual—I didn't know English then—came with the computer and I started reading it, typing little programs, tweaking them, and then eventually writing clones of my own, later variations.
By the time the datassette problem was identified, sent to be fixed, and returned to me I had found programming to be much more fun than the available games. I did play them and enjoyed many but I'm not much of a gamer even today, really.
(And yes, tuning the reading-head was dead easy DYI job as I learned shortly after.)
My grandpa bought me a TRS-80 when I was 4-5 (don't recall exactly) because "computers are the future." My only cartridges were LOGO and Sokoban so if I wasn't in the mood to push boxes around...
I don't know if you can really call it programming but I'd spend hours writing out huge I/O conversations with the computer that only worked if you knew how it was supposed to go in advance. I found it fascinating.
"Hello, I'm a computer, what's your name?"
"Hello [name], how are you feeling today?"
"I'm glad you're feeling [feeling]!"
etc
And I had the companion radio shack cassette deck that you could use to store programs on. I always had to copy those programs out of the book because I didn't understand them at all.
Sounds similar to my experience. I remember writing a text-based flight simulator on the TRS-80 in BASIC named "F-14" when I was 10 or 11. It was terrible. My takeoff sequence simply incremented your speed, printed it out, and required the user to hit the "stick back" key on the keyboard once you were in the right speed range. The game was basically a text adventure with a few realtime elements thrown in. It also had music which was more like a set of random beeps that sometimes ended up sounding like a melody. Writing about it now makes me want to build it again.
I remember how excited I was when I was able to write data to a floppy from one of my programs. I felt like I could conquer the world.
All I had back then was the BASIC manual, but I was able to learn enough to be dangerous. My first real exposure to probability was the sample code in the manual for a Craps program. Great stuff for a kid to learn!
Apple ][ at 9 yo then moved to C64. Did my first machine language programming using a disassembler, typing in the hex for opcodes and arguments. Ended up typing in the source code for an assembler from a book.
I have many happy memories of typing in games with my dad into our Apple ][. We'd get magazines with the source code printed in them (which just sounds bizarre to me now).
Looks as if I am completely typical of this group. I started using computers aged 10, but only wrote programs unambiguously of my own making (as opposed to typed in from a book or magazine) at the age of 11.
I am 25 and I learned to program in 7th grade, when I was 12 years old. I joined a "Warez" group on AOL that distributed pirated software and Mp3s. This was pre-napster era by the way. At the time, it just seemed like a cool group to join. I was a really curious kid and I did not realize the illegality of it all.
I was mentored by others in the group. I learned HTML and Web design. Also, I learned to program AOL add-ons using Visual Basic 6.0 and the good ole' Win32 API. I could have knocked my dad over with a feather when I told him I was learning to program. He was so excited. He is also a techy and a bit of a hacker.
I made a bunch of AOL add-ons like chat room macros, trivia games, and auto instant message responders. But, my fondest project was a chat room e-mail server. It would parse an AOL chat room for requests. Then, it would forward the appropriate message (with the software attached) via e-mail to the requester. I called in to AOL's customer support line and told them I ran a popular newsletter. I was able to whitelist my AOL account. This way, I would not be limited by their daily e-mail limit. They bought it.
After repeatedly punting and then TOSing a classmate, and having their account shutdown. AOL caught on to my nefarious ways. They terminated my families AOL account, and blacklisted our credit card. My mother, who used AOL to chat with grandma and browse the internet, was furious. My dad went along with my mom. But, later in life, told me how proud he was of me and how he told all of his friends at work. He used to joke, "Yea, AOL refuses to take my money after Robby got done with em."
Mine was very gradual to the point where I´m not sure how to answer it. I remember from an early age playing with software like Trillian Pro and Frontpage (express maybe too?) and seeing what everything did and watching the HTML change. I didn´t have Internet access very often (I was restricted on when I could dial in on my old Windows 95 and later 98 boxes), so I never hosted anything. But when I was online I started finding JavaScript snippets and starting playing with them and started figuring out what they did to the point where I was starting to do programming that way by the time I was nine or ten.
The first time I specifically felt like I was programming was when friend when I was nine showed me an old QBasic book he had found. He showed me some little programs he had written and that night I spent all night on our old Windows 3.1 computer seeing what I could do with it. I just made little text adventure games and math equation solvers.
Then once I we got DSL around when I was 11 I started to hang on USENET and IRC (older technologies of the time, but they were cool to me) where some folks introduced me to Python.
Age 8. Using my dad's PC (Compaq Transportable), I got my start typing in BASIC programs found in the back of Enter magazine. From age 11-14, HyperCard/HyperTalk (Macintosh SE) was my favorite/only environment for writing programs (called "stacks"). Then high-school happened, and I discovered girls and sports. I didn't really get back into programming again until college.
Started programming "Paper Computers" around 8, first got my hands on a "portable teletype" connected to a (who knows what) operated by Tymshare.
My language path looked something like:
Paper Assembler (hand assembled, hand executed),
Basic.
APL (on an IBM-5100 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100)
National Semiconductor SC/MP Machine Code (hand assembled, and entered on hex keypad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Semiconductor_SC/MP),
C,
C++ (dark days indeed),
Scheme (ahh... that's better!),
Javascript (hey... not unlike Scheme),
Powerpoint (became an "executive"),
Perl,
Python,
Groovy (surprisingly awesome, been meaning to write a "Groovy is an acceptable Lisp" post)
Never done anything meaningful in Java (all the ugly of C++!), Ruby (just haven't had a reason) nor Haskell (but think it's kind of pretty)
Scheme is still my favorite by far since I find it the most beautiful and powerful.
I started at around 23, when I took a 2 year programming diploma course at a local school. I'd bounced around university/college for a few years without knowing what I wanted to do with my life. I liked computers, and figured I'd give it a shot. It's been a good career ever since I graduated, and I'm still liking the challenge.
I put 6-10 but it's not like I have 25 years of programming experience, or like it was an early calling.
It's for the hours spent mostly copying BASIC programs from magazines on an Amstrad CPC464. (with very little success rate: these magazine program were not quite working) Then, there's a gap of a few years, before college where I realized that maybe I should go with Computer Science, rather than Mechanical Engineering.
Now, I'm not quite a developer per se (in that I've never had a purely development job and that I'm mostly hacking things together rather than producing production code) but still spend most of my free time thinking about projects and building early proof-of-concepts and prototypes.
At this point, I'm very glad I know some programming but am still wondering if I should go full-on with it and work on it to the point where I can confidently look for a development job...
I started at a very basic level when I was 5, with Logo and BASIC on the C64.
I wrote programs that generated colorful pictures in Logo, and the barest beginnings of a text adventure game (to which my only exposure was Logo Adventure) that revolved around my stuffed animals in BASIC.
By the time I was 8 or 9, I really wanted to write something like Zork or other text adventures, but I had not the faintest idea how to make a parser for that, and nobody was really helping me, unfortunately.
Then in my early teens, I worked a bit with ARexx, AmigaVision and AmigaShell and I really, really wish we had bought Borland C because I really wanted it back then...
Then, I didn't really do anything programming-wise for 15 years until I picked up PHP a few years ago. Oops! I did a lot of interesting things in between, but I wish I'd picked up serious programming skills a lot earlier in life.
I was 8 or 9 when the teacher in my small rural school brought in his Sharp MZ-80K and taught the class to program. We hand-wrote and debugged our code with pen and paper and took our turns to type them in and test them. Within a short while I was coding applications to teach and test History and Irish Language which he subsequently sold. Next summer I worked with him teaching Basic, Logo and Word Processing to teachers as a summer job. After that we got a Sharp MZ700 and later an Amstrad CPC464, and I went on to teach myself Z80 assembly. Went to Uni and studied Computer Science and the joys of VAX/VMS, Unix, x86 PCs, the early days of the Internet (nic.funet.fi via FTP-over-email anyone?)
I can't believe I've been programming for 30 years! I feel old...
I began programming when I've got my first computer, an Atari 600XL (what a pos for 1992). I learnt BASIC from a collection of science magazines from the 80s that my older brothers had and from an Atari BASIC manual.
Unfortunately I never had a diskette drive nor some assembler books :(
The discussion here brings back a lot of fond memories. The Apple II was a great computer and easy for a teenager to understand. Source was available for almost everything (and what wasn't officially available had been disassembled and documented with high quality.)
Here's something other HN members might enjoy: Got access to an old Apple with Applesoft BASIC? Try this:
Now, run any BASIC program and listen. You'll quickly discover you can tell what the machine is doing. Floating point? Rapid ticks. Tight loop near the beginning of the program? High-pitched whine. Great for debugging or simulating a background thread.
Age 11. The year was 1969. My stepfather was a physicist; he took me to his office on Saturdays and gave me access to an ASR-11 Teletype connected to a GE Mark V timesharing system. My first programs were in Basic and did nothing interesting, of course.
I've often wondered to what extent programming is like learning a musical instrument or another language. That is, you can learn these things when you're older, but in order to truly master them you must start when you're young.
Seems like a pretty apt analogy, programming is a very creative process. When you're a kid you might start off with very simple instruments, toys even. That's akin to me first programming Pirch and mIRC without really thinking about the fact I was programming, I just wanted to make an fserve or whatever. Then I actually started reading about it and learned VB. I don't use those languages anymore just as older and more experienced musicians wouldn't use cheap toy instruments, artists would stop using crayons, etc. But I learned a lot by "playing" in my early teen years.
I was 8 or 9 or so and we were at a point where we were well-off and had a TRS-Model 3 in the house, which was inconceivable at the time.It was a horrendously expensive and beefy machine.
My mother was taking some college courses involving COBOL and Fortran. I jumped on COBOL and helped her with her homework. I later dabbled with BASIC, Pascal, and C like others my age.
This is what sparked me on computers. Before that, I worked on building, listening, and transmitting on radios with my grandfather.
I got started on "UNIX" programming on my Amiga 500 running MINIX (I had at least 3 floppy drives (no hard disk at all), but still did a ton of floppy swapping).
I don't recall the exact age. Dad brought home a VT100 and an acoustic coupler (actually, it might first have been a 52). Sometime after, he created a separate account for me on his employer's PDP -- or had they upgraded to the VAX by then?
Props to the employer for (sort of silently) permitting this.
Separately: Email, shemail. Via TALK, I was IM-ing before most people knew what email was. ;-)
Also, turning in school papers processed through runoff greatly impressed some teachers -- deservedly or not.
Finally: I still miss the DEC manuals and the like. Back when documentation was DOCUMENTATION.
QBASIC circa 1995. I started writing games - and pulled down some open source game code (although I did not know what open source was at the time) and was completely perplexed at what a for loop was.
I tinkered with ZX Spectrum macros from books/magazines occassionally when I was a kid... shame nobody was around to encourage me ever so slightly (once I got a games console, I stopped completely). I also meddled with websites a tiny bit, and had some programming lessons at school.
But I didn't get into programming seriously until I was 22 (VBA scripting for Excel at work). Sometimes I wonder how hard it will be to catch up, although so long as I stay ahead of the average CS graduate I should be OK. I think.
When I was 7 or 8 I used to enjoy typing BASIC programs into the TI-994A my parents had bought. One day I accidentally wrote a simple program that did what I expected, and I was thrilled.
My only regret is that I never had proper books for the version of basic I was using (TI, Apple, etc.). This was b/c it was never an intention of my parents that I learn to program. I just found it more fun than video games, even though I could find no explanation anywhere for what some of the keywords did :)
I did the same with our C64 around the same age. I never call that "beginning programming", though, because it took very little problem solving on my part, and doesn't come close to what it takes to make something usable nowadays.
I was eight. The year was 1983, and I was attending an elementary school that was participating in a pilot program that introduced Logo programming to third graders. I got exposure to Logo through the class, and because my mom taught at the school, I got a lot of after-school time in the lab too.
Essentially: I was incredibly fortunate in a number of dimensions. (I still see themes in the way I work now that originated way back when... all these years later.)
I honestly don't know. It depends on how you define "started programming." I remember messing around, typing in BASIC programs with my Bally Arcade console back when I was about 9/10 or so, but my interest in that fizzled out for one reason or another, and I didn't get back into programming until I started writing C code in college when I was about 19. I've been programming continuously since then.
I was 16, this was 6 years ago, and I saw a friend program something in QBASIC. I was in complete awe - and I saw my future scroll past in front of me. Within one hour, I had written my own keyboard controlled piano by tapping into the PC-speaker. Now I'm in a computer science program at a university and working full time as a .NET developer (quitting to go back full time to school after the summer.)
I voted 11-16, but I started dabbling around 7 with TI-BASIC on a TI-99. It was mostly playing, though, at that age. Then in HS, I started writing simple games in GWBASIC. We didn't have Internet access at home then, so it was about all that was easily accessible to me. When I got to college, I started getting into web dev languages and that's when I started getting serious about it.
One of the things I have noticed between most of my friends that are really good programmers is that they started very early.
I was quite a late starter, around 15/16 year at school I did a project for computing class to clone "cdbaby or cdnow.com" in cold fusion and javascript, I wasnt even particularly certain about going to uni to do computer science.
I started with 12, stealing html & javascript from other sites. I played around with Flash some time, but then started coding in PHP with 14 or something. Never stopped since then.
I'm 21 now and I have a web development company since last year based in Buenos Aires (Argentina).
Pretty cool how the dots connect when you look back in time!
Wow, reading some of the responses makes me feel YOUNG.
I started programming some 3 or 4 years ago (at the young age of 14) in C. I wrote various simple tools that did cool things. For example, in mid 2008, I wrote a short program that interfaced with a wiimote (using one of the various libraries) to control xmms2. xmms2 was controlled by means of system(3).
14 on a TI 83 while bored at school. Then I crashed my dad's car into a fence at 14 and he made me learn java as my punishment (I was trying to wash his civic, so he wasn't harsh on me). I hated java so bad that other than some TI basic apps, I didn't program again until 17 when I got heavy into PHP and then landed a job doing that.
First started programming in my freshman year of college, which was about 6 years ago. Took to it pretty well, really enjoyed it, and it remained my major for the duration of my time at school. To this day I'm not sure why I chose to apply as a computer science major, but I'm keenly aware of why I continued to do it: it's fun!
I was 5. My parents bought me a Sinclair ZX Spectrum,
and since I couldn't afford buying games on cassettes, I started by typing in game source code from magazines and then I quickly started trying to change them at which point I learned programming pretty quickly, since there was a strong incentive behind it.
I was about 11 or so. I got a hand-me-down Apple II from my uncle which came with a few manuals. One of which was for the Lisa assembler which had some graphics routines. I just punched a few in and had some fun with it. Then again, I was the kid who asked for chemistry sets and electonics kits for xmas...
Age 12. Traded my Atari 2600 and a bunch of cartridges for an Atari 400 with BASIC and Pac-Man. Learned to program from Antic and Creative Computing magazines. I can still hear that old Atari 410 cassette making the noises. Also, the Atari 400 made be very appreciative of real keyboards later in life.
First started programming on PETs in 2nd grade. Finally got my own Apple //c in 4th grade. Worked through the AppleSoft BASIC tutorial, then kind of hit a lull until I started BBSing in 10th grade - then did a lot of ACOS/MACOS code, dabbled with (6502) assembler. Then it was off to get a CS degree...
I think the App Store is helping here by introducing people to a huge variety of applications, thus giving them a huge base from which to come up with app ideas later if they become programmers.
So even if someone starts programming at a later age, experience learned with novel apps at a younger age can be helpful.
My brother in law (to be) started teaching me C++ on a road trip. When we got back I snagged a old Apple IIe from the high school that they were just tossing. After a few months of Apple Basic and a giant program where I didn't leave enough room between lines to fix a bug... I went back to C++
14. I had a ZX81 with 1k of memory.
Programmed in "assembler" in Hex with a handwritten sheet of the opcodes.
As an aside, it is amazing how we are able to adapt to new technology. I find it quite normal these days to program in Java and Lisp using a 1000x the memory of my first machine to print "hello world".
I got my first real computer (a C128D - C64 + C128 in one) when I was 8, with a pile of games on floppy discs. A year later, I was bored of the games and I picked up one of the books that came with it, that was titled something along the lines of "Programming your C64 with BASIC"...
Disregarding some unsuccessful attempts in BASIC on a ZX-81 clone I learned programming from a Borland´s Turbo C manual (a Christmas present for our new shiny AMD 386). I was 15 or so and playing computer games all day wasn't interesting enough anymore.
I got started when I was 11 or 12 with something called Blitz Basic. It was a language developed for the purpose of quick, easy game development. Game development was what got me hooked, with my first real program being a 'guess the number' game.
I don't see why not...the TI-82 had a pretty robust programming language. I programmed a helicopter game on mine back in high school, as well as the obligatory blackjack and poker games.
I was thirteen - my parents didn't know what a computer was good for - so i didn't got one. so i had to write my first programs onto sheets of paper (lot's of them).
i had to do lots of typing when i finally got my c64 ;-)
About 7 years old. I learned on a CPC 64 my uncle had - he had lost the CP/M tape, so all I was left with on first contact with the machine was a BASIC interpreter prompt (and the manuals).
PEEKed and POKEd my way out of there pretty fast..
I didn't own a computer so I'd check out Apple II Basic programming books from the school library and write the "programs" out on a piece of paper. I started doing this roughly in the 3rd grade... seems rather sad now...
I was 7 or 8 when dad installed qbasic (and its packaged games - tetris clone, etc). After getting bored with them, I asked him if there were cheat codes. He said there sure were, and handed me a Learn Qbasic book.
I got Visual Basic at 12ish, but didn't stick with it for much more than a few months. Then at 13-14 I picked up TI-BASIC for my calculator. And a 16 I started down the road of "real programming" with PHP.
I had to be 6 or 7 - BASIC, then Assembler, on a Timex Sinclair 1000 - 2K of memory and audio tape storage - moved up to the 2000, then the Coleco Adam, and finally an 8086 I assembled with my father....
I got started with Turtle programming when I was 11 or 12 when my Dad introduced me to it. Had the most fun making a turtle script that wrote "Happy Birthday Dad" for his birthday that year. Fun times!
Age 13. In early 1994, I started building little websites in HTML for my friends and family. Might have been even earlier if you count playing around with BASIC in school computer lab on an Apple II.
I wrote html sites and dabbled with php when I was 12 from online tutorials, however, I didn't really start understanding how to program until I was 15 when I took my first computer science course.
Microsoft BASIC on a 128k Macintosh. Learned some toolbox the hard way by looking through the source for a breakout/pong-type game that think was programmed by someone at Jet Propulsion Lab.
My high-school (The Science Academy of South Texas) offered computer science for incoming freshmen and later a CS 2 class. I assumed that this was normal because there was a CS AP exam.
Born in '75 ... my parents bought me an Atari 400 and I programmed BASIC on it ... but I can't remember what year. The 400 came out in 79 but I think it was a couple years after that.
Yeah, BASIC on the Atari 400 was my first experience too.
It was the early 80's and I was about 7/8 yrs old, the guy in my local electronics shop used to allow my brother and I to photocopy programs from various magazines, of course they would be lost when we turned off the atari, also sometimes we messed up the photocoying, so we were forced to try figure it out our selves. What fun!
Game Programming at 9yrs on a Tandy TSR-80 on Basic from Microsoft.It was hard at the time, did not know English and the manuals were in English. It was very fun though, and it still is.
BASIC on a Spectravideo 328. My second computer was an Amiga 500, and programming assembly on it was just amazing fun, especially learning to control the custom chips.
I started on a TRS-80 with tape casette backup programming basic at a local computer lab. My first computer was a commodore vic-20, then finally the commodore 64 :).
Started with BASIC on a ZX-81, when that blew we bought an Atari 800 where I learned Action! and Assembly. Learned C on my Atari ST, then on to IBM PC's and Linux.
14. 11th grade. Got my schedule, and I had an empty 1st period. Ran into a friend who was taking the computer course. Fortran on an IBM 1130. Punch cards. 1971.
Commodore 64, which I got when I was in elementary school. I still remember a bunch of the POKE codes you would use to change the colors in Commodore 64 BASIC.
Now, they either start with Javascript or learn to program on their graphing calculators. They are usually interested in graphical apps, so Java/Objective-C sometimes too.
I wrote (in assembler) a terminal-based football simulation based on what I remembered of a program I had played on an ASR-33 terminal during a tour of Bell Labs with a friend's father a year or two before. I was 15 or so.
I was curious how the games worked so I started hex editing them at random, seeing what would happen if I changed this and that, etc.
Long story short I learned to write programs in 68000 machine code (binary) and recognize patterns in ROMs (music, art, code). I still remember how to code simple things in machine code.
Imagine my joy when I discovered assemblers, and after that, compilers a while later :)