I learned to program…

Coders, complete this sentence:

I learned to program…

Some responses:

…when I was 11 so that I could beat my dad at Robot Battle.

…on the back side of punched cards on a UNIVAC 1100 as an intern at the Swedish Defence Central in the late 70s.

…making a website for my band that I wanted to be more dynamic.

…because I believed (and still do) it’s one of the best skills to have in order to change people’s live for the better.

…and it changed my life forever.

I learned to program… is a project of Ben Chun, who posted this call to coders on wp-hackers (WordPress maillist):

I’m a high school computer science teacher and I often have students who
want to hack on things like WordPress or other open-source projects, but they don’t see a path from where they are to that goal.

So I started a web site for sharing how and why people started programming. Will you share your story? http://ilearnedtoprogram.com.

As the site has gotten more entries, I’ve been reminded of a bunch of fun things from my childhood. Maybe you’ll enjoy a trip down memory lane as well.

For more, see Ben’s post, “How did you learn to program? « And Yet It Moves.”

(FWIW, my answer:
I learned to program… to make web presentations of our public radio stories — now I do far more web and far less radio.)