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[hemmingjay]

deleted

[x2yzh9]

   My brother. He used to sit in his room all the time when he was in middle school-high school, but i have to admit, i learned alot from him. I got into computers after finding myself bored for long, intense periods of time, and so he helped me get over the initial hurdles of the internet and computers themselves-It was a real help indeed, and as a matter of fact i later got interested in programming in C++. Though I've already decided that I don't have enough time to devote to a project to make it feasible, I may get into programming as a hobby later on in life as I already have a profession in sights.

   I have to admit, at first it was mind-boggling as a whole, but when you take it step by step, it becomes immensely easier. Not saying it's going to just be plain out easy, most technical stuff on the internet and computers is still hard even with a step-by-step approach, but, with the help of my brother and my own intuition, i've gotten to the point where i can solve a technical computer problem by myself.


   I hope this is the winner. Heh, i'm not the best writer so here's hoping.

[Xgamer4]

I attended high school at a public charter school focusing on technology. The way the process worked when I attended, though they've since refined it, is that you'd take a generic "intro to computers" course your freshman year, then an "intro to networking" course one semester of your sophomore year with an "intro to web design" course the other semester. At the end of our sophomore year, we'd pick a path for our junior and senior year; either "Programming", "Networking", "Graphics Design", or "Electronics/Engineering". In order to graduate, we needed to work a 280 hour internship our senior year, though to facilitate this we got out of classes early every day of our senior year.

This is just a bit of background on the school itself. I was inspired by the school itself, and the great teachers we had, to want to do my best. I learned a significant amount about programming and networking between the school and my internship.

Of course, while the above paragraph is definitely true, the greatest source of inspiration I got from the four years at that school was the inspiration that working with computers is not what I want to do as a career. The idea behind the internship and many of the things done at the school was to give everyone an understanding of how the industry would really work after we left school and went to work. This proved effective enough that, after leaving high school, I realized that I really did not want to spend the rest of my life in a computer-science-based career. The school gave me the inspiration to find what I really wanted to do, instead of what I thought I wanted to do, and the practical experience to realize that I didn't really want to do what I thought I did.



That probably goes in the exact opposite direction of what you were thinking, but there ya go. If you have any questions or something, or you want clarification, I'll keep an eye on this thread until I have to leave in a few hours. If you have any personal questions, like my name or the name of the school, send me a PM or an email or something.

[Jack A T]

I was bored one day and found a book on HTML in my house, so I started to read it.  I was in grade 1 or 3 at the time, I think.  I wasn't really inspired by anything, I just wanted something to do.  Then came the few years when I was fixing my school's computers (plugging headphones in and turning on computers, because the teachers somehow didn't know how).

The only formal computer education I've received was a very bad Tech Ed 8 class last year (computers couldn't handle the software we were using, we used a web page design program to design web pages because HTML would be too complex for these people, and everything was a group project...at the very end of the year).

So, basically, I was bored one day and started reading a book on HTML.

EDIT: Oh my, you stopped taking entries 45 minutes ago, before even the first entry arrived.  Well, that can't be good.

[Cthulhu]

Seriously, man.  You only gave 40 minutes.  That's nowhere near enough time for someone to come up with a decent entry.

[DennyTom]

For me it was a phd student that was lecturing us on basic course of c++. We all had some programming experience (mostly making easy simulations like modeling the flow of heat or wearing of road in front of lights, etc). He had absolutely no idea of what we will be doing in the class before it actually started. When he needed something or something else was not working he just found it on web. Then he made sure we actually understand the piece of code by forcing us to modify it in some way. The class was absolute madness, but it opened our eyes what is possible to do in a really short time and what to do when something is terribly wrong. During the course (under 20 real life hours) we made primitive multiplayer 3D FPS with in-game voice chat and scoring system.

[qwertyuiopas]

Does that 12 noon EST refer to today, or a later day?

~~~~

I have always been interested in creating things, although I never really did make much. Back in grade 6 or 7, I noticed this in a scholl book order. It was terribly limited, but it was what I had for over a year. Then, I found a java book in a used book store, and it had a CD, although I don't think I did much with it. Not long afterwards, my dad got me a set of Microsoft's compilers(express editions(the free ones), but since at that time I didn't have internet access, it was great. Later, I worked on modifying a game built on the Torque Game Engine, and someone else playing the game(I didn't make it, I just used the fact that it left it's code open to modification to make my own additions to my copy) directed me towards Dev-C++. One day, it stopped compiling C++(Or was it C?) programs(I recently discovered it was a conflict in the path, as a result of me getting the MinGW compiler that Dev-C++ is built as an IDE to), so I started working with C(Or was it C++?). Eventually, I got tired with the long IDE startup times and failure to compile one of the two languages, so I started using just MinGW and notepad for a while. A few years later, and here I am, still entirely self-taught, intending to go on to higher education, and I recently wrote a COM object in plain C, no atl or other helper libraries.

I am somewhat worried that higher education might not be advanced enough to teach me something new, although a few lines of writing on an official sheet of paper will probably really help me later in life, even if I don't learn anything.

[hemmingjay]

Excellent entries so far. Sorry for the confusion, entries will be accepted until tomorrow, approximately 20 hrs from now.

[Soulwynd]

I've never had any class or teachers. Well, I did have at college, but I already knew most of it. For me it started when I was around 8. My father was the first to own a computer in this city, but not only that, it was a network. We had several 286s as terminals and the server's HDs were bigger than bricks and only held about 20mb of data. To compare, they were as big as two normal computer dvdr drives stacked up. Of course, being a kid, I wanted to play with those things, so my father gave me a DGT1000 (Basically a local Tandy) with a tape recorder, which was a BASIC-OS computer. Obviously, I didn't know english back then and the only BASIC book we had was in english, plus basic itself is pretty much english. With a dictionary I pretty much self-taught english and basic, and started making my own little games. I made the classic snake one, some pong, some silly shooters, and even tried to turn one of those old d&d adventure books into a text-rpg, but soon found out it couldn't store all text in the computer's memory. After that I went to a 286 and the wonders of pascal and at the time I got my 486, I was getting started with C and modding computers. I made that 486-66 run as fast as a pentium 200, until it caught on fire. Somewhere there came the BBS gameplaying and the amazingly fast 2400 baud modems. But that's another story.

So yeah, that's how I got started. I guess what really inspired me was trying to douse a computer.

[Cthulhu]

My school was that of Hard Knocks.  My teacher was Google, and when Google was sick Trial and Error substituted.

[Dohon]

I never actually met a teacher that started the "computer-itch", but I do know that it was my dad who got me into computers. When I was just a wee lad, he already played some games with me. Prince of Persia (the very first!), Doom Shareware, F17A Nighthawk, ... Especially the last one was something.

My father always loved planes. Especially a Corsair. And even though I wasn't old enough to actually realise it, I nonetheless kept quiet, in awe. He would go on night sorties, doing bomb runs. He talked to me all the way through and I was content enough to just sit there, gaping at the screen. I think the bug hit hard at that point, because he started to show me how to actually use a computer outside of gaming. At the age of 7, I could make a boot disk, start and install my own games. Granted, I regularly ran back to "papa" to help me understand the "funny" words, but I got the gist of it.

Shortly after that, a "create bootdisk" went awry and I formatted the entire drive. Dad didn't like that, but he nonetheless kept teaching me. He also gamed a lot with me back in those days. Hell, he even started a small LAN network so we could play Doom together. Those were the days. Soon after, at the age of 12, he helped me build my first pc. How the drive worked, what ram really was and how important a CPU and GPU were. I didn't get it all at first, but he never quite gave up teaching.

Now I'm 24 and I can easily build computers, talk about hardware, game like the "cool kids" and even tinker around in webdesign. And I'm not the only one. My brother is currently studying to be a full blown programmer and he's rubbing off on me. While I'm far from an expert, I do understand a tiny weeny bit of C++, Java and some Perl. Some HTML too. All because of one cool dad. I love him for introducing me to the humongous world of computers. We still play a few games together (those sessions can be pretty intense. You should us go at it in Combat Flight Simulator One. Him in his Corsair, me in a Zero. Great times) and just a few weeks ago, we spent an afternoon together, trying to figure out why our router didn't seem to transmit.

So, yeah, my dad was my teacher and I'm pretty sure I'll never have a cooler one than him.

[Eviltyphoon]

Prince of Persia (the very first!)

Holy shit. (forgive the bad word). I can't believe you mentioned that.

My story:

There never was a person to get me into computers. Or well, maybe there was my dad. I remember us having a computer for my entire (18y short) life now. The very first one was a win 95 computer that was actually my dads second computer. And at first, it didn't really interest me, untill he somehow got a hold of a diskette with that prince of persia game Dohon talked about. It was my introduction to gaming. Although I never got any farther then fighting the first enemy, because i didn't know the controls. And well, from that time on, I spent more and more time sitting behind a computer, playing those fun old game such as LEGO Island, Ceasar III, AoE, etc...

Now, a friend of mines parents also had a computer, running windows 3.11. So I whenever I was there, we spent the time playing the only games he had for that computer. A 99 in one game cd. It was actually packed with crappy stuff such as aplhabet games, which we just ignored, but there were 2 games that stood out. One was a topdown space shooter, the other one a topdown hooter. We spent loads of time playing those 2 games.

And then, 2001, the tyear of revelation. A new computer. New games... BUT, most importantly, INTERNET! I had never been so exited in my life... I remember getting a free copy of Midtown Madness II and Crimson Skies with that pc. MMII I played till the cd got scratched so badly it was rendered unusable, crimson skies I kept failing at... The following years more and more games followed, making me spend more and more time playing games. I played MoHaa, MoHaaS, Hitman, AoE 2, Commandos, the list is endless.

However, one can not keep playing games so actively forever. Thus comes an end to a period in my life. I grew up, and realised games weren't all there was to life. I still played them, yet much less. I spent most of my time browsing the internet, chatting with friend, all that stuff. But sometimes, there would be that one game that would make it start all over again. A game that was so much fun, you could play it for hours. Oblivion, Team fortress 2, Left 4 dead... These were part of a more game intense period of the last few years.

But those same last few years, I realised the true potential for computer. I got more intrested in programming, and when my school offered a visual basic 6 course for free, I jumped on it as a starving dog would jump on a meat roast. Though short, I learned a lot from that one course, and I started messing aroud with gamemakers made in VB6, one of them being Eclipse, a great 2D ORPG creator that I had loads of fun with, but never made a real game with.

And, where do I stand now? I'm in my first year of college, doing Multimedia- and communication technology, working with computers on all levels (from learnining how transistors work to learning photoshop), and it's great fun. Computers are an integral part of my life, and I can't imagine how my life would have looked without them. I do wonder what would have happened if my dad hadn't gotten a hold of that one PoP diskette...

[Grakelin]

The part of my education that inspired me the most was when a sociology prof slapped me upside the head and told me why bribing people to do your homework for you is still unethical.

[Zironic]

The part of my education that inspired me the most was when a sociology prof slapped me upside the head and told me why bribing people to do your homework for you is still unethical.

>still unethical

When will it be ethical, because I will just use my time machine and go there.

[hemmingjay]

Just about 3 hours left to submit.