Personally, I started off with Roblox back in the early 2010s, and taught myself Lua. I really liked those Tycoon games, and wanted to see how they worked.
I eventually found Minecraft (like every kid back in the day did), and learnt Java to make Bukkit server mods.
Around 2016 I thought websites were kinda cool, so I started learning HTML, CSS, and JS, and I’ve been in the web dev space ever since.
What about the rest of y’all? What’s your personal programming path?
I first got into programming as a kid, when my dad gave me his old DOS PC and a reference manual for QBASIC. I taught myself the language by studying example programs and looking up commands in the manual. I wasn’t very good at it (I’m not sure I ever figured out how write a function lol), but I loved it and spent hundreds of hours making little “choose your own adventure” style games.
When I was a bit older, I got into Minecraft and wanted to create my own mods. I taught myself Java and made a few simple tweaks with Modloader. I didn’t like Java, but I liked seeing the results of my work in a 3D world so I stuck with it. Most of my friends also played Minecraft so we started a private server running our favorite mods. We quickly found that it was hard to keep modded clients in sync, so I pivoted to Bukkit plugins. I maintained those plugins for years and even published some of them, which introduced me to the concept of OSS. I kept with that all the way into college, when my old friend group collapsed and I finally shut down the server.
Here, I actually pivoted away from programming and studied computer security. I even swapped the software development branch of my major for a cyber security focus instead. I only swung back to programming at the very last minute because I got a software internship and really enjoyed the work. I still graduated with a cyber security focus, but now I’m a professional software developer 🤷♀️