What or who motivated/motivates you to learn how to program?

Question

This is what motivates me:

1) I want to bring change to the world
2) I want to "learn" from data...I scrape data from the internet and run text analytics on it so I can have first knowledge of a topic or trend before anybody does
3) I want a career in IT...I'm actually working on a startup but I take client projects when they come
4) My more experienced programmer friends

Your turn! What motivates you?

Answer 1

Personally, my drive is curiosity. I first learned to program for a summer research opportunity in college. That led to a couple more mixes of programming & science, along with a CS minor.

Now, after a long stretch of disability & unemployment, I'm going back to my roots: science support programming at radio telescope.

I may not be doing my own research, but I'm facilitating that of others, and that feels good.

Of course, there is always the "I wonder" little projects that spring to mind from time to time, solving those is just icing on the cake.

Answer 2

I've had an interest in programming since I was a child, but I never pursued it because I thought it was a useless skill/hobby, nerdy, too hard to enjoy, or that I wouldn't like it if I tried it. My husband, who is in the IT field, found out about my interest and encouraged me to try coding out. I found SoloLearn, started the C++ tutorial, and fell in love. I'm going to school in the fall because of this newfound passion.

My husband is my biggest cheerleader through all my frustration to understand these weird new languages and concepts. It's pretty cool finally understanding some of the things he's saying when he talks about work and computers, and being able to hold conversations about nerdy computer stuff with him.

Answer 3

Frankly, 1. It looks cool 2. Using Linux CLI for long time 3. Compiling Android 4. Python bite me 5. Learned to Script 6. Messing with root file system 7. Frustrated after having lack of this and that programming knowledge 8. Linux source code is 90% of C.
WT* C is now.. 9. Got 9999 times compiling error to Hello World program. And that's what I love... messing up and then screwed up

Answer 4

Programming is just a toy to kill time, better than Facebook. That's what attracted me