Yes, sometimes I regret. But all comes when it should. So, maybe if I started learn earlier I wouldn’t be imbued with programming. But now it is my passion. And I am really happy that I found my way in this life. It is like find your soul mate, but even 100 times better.

I started when I was around 11, I didn't get really serious though. It was with Basic. Then a bit of c in high school and then nothing until much later in life. Probably on and off with frontend web stuff from my early to mid twenties, only about age 30 did I get serious about it and started learning Go.

I wouldn't say I regret not starting sooner, but there are times I wonder how far I would have come if I had.

That is my most regret thing ever.

Despite being happy for experiencing other things (aside from a medical hell), I regret not learning programming before I was 15 such that I would have focused myself on CompSci more than subjects like Architecture which took a lot of time where I could have learnt and practised programming and other coding relating things.

Yes and no. Yes because I think I'd have had a blast and found a passion much earlier. No because I did other things that I wouldn't change.

I started when I was 16,but it doesn't matter because coding keeps changing. I was coding in zx basic in 1981. Then came C, then C++, and C# and php. So it doesn't matter if you start coding at 16, because by the time you are 20 you have to learn new coding skills anyway. Changing to oop was the biggest hurdle at first, but it is second nature now.

I only got a computer at age 13, started deving at age 15 - grateful that I got to do other things before I got stuck behind a computer screen.

People always regret things... almost everyone.

Tell you what... even if you did pick up programming earlier, you'd still have some other regrets. I got my first laptop when I was 9. By 10, I was so sick of spending my time gaming, I'd rather learn how those fancy computers work in terms of software... and I did! I learned PHP, got into web development, got off PHP onto better languages. My parents weren't the most supportive, they didn't let me stare into my laptop for more than an hour a day. I had to save up pocket money to buy a dial-up access card (do people even remember those right now?)

It all was fun and cool and a lot of still uncharted territory. When I was 15, I learned that being a developer can actually make you money, and not just some money, but pretty good money (I traveled on my own, with a friend, both without parents, when I was 16)

Where were we at? Ah right, the regrets. Looking back, I wish I had spent my time more efficiently. That I started freelancing earlier. That I was planning for the longer term instead of just immediate gains. I'm almost 20 now, but it still makes me a bit sad from time to time, but one thing I realized is...

You can't change the past, so the regretting is not getting you anywhere. If anything, it might only be holding you behind. Get over it and realize that, while you don't control the past, you do control the present (and therefore the future). Think bigger and focus on things that might not be rewarding immediately, but that will add up with time. Posting to a blog once a week seems anything but rewarding, but with time, your blog does become a pretty good marketer for yourself, it brings you in new contracts, and there are many more examples of the long-term thinking.

I had (not took, we can't choose most of our classes in Indian Engineering / Otherwise almost every other college(s)) one C programming language class in my first semester, and that unfortunately was taught by a contract teacher, I/we didn't like very much [Apologies for this] mainly because he wished to make us punish more for the things that we couldn't answer, than to teach us to make us learn.

I had no idea about where would I be going until a year back, when I grabbed the only college campus placement that I had. It was a very decent placement. Junior Web Developer, salary to afford basic things, stable internet.

6 months was training, for the people who didn't have any background in programming / Computer Science before. There was so much resistance, and pressure, it was hard to learn how to code, and more so learn the optimisations, and work arounds of tricky problems, and bugs! I give up multiple times. But I didn't know what I'd do if not, not give up on this, so I kept coming back, pushing myself.

There's so much to learn, and the edge just keeps expanding to new horizons every single day. It's intimidating. It's more intimidating than the expansion of the universe because, that's not very visible / noticeable there. The other day, I started reading Addy Osmani's React + PWA series, and I stopped after the second, it was too much to grasp all at once, without actually coding along.

I regret having thrown 4 years of my college not learning how to program, although I was intrigued by it. I'd picked up processing programming language, and tried to do some out of the world font magic for the college magazine, which I was the editor of, but I couldn't (read didn't)

I'm 22, started coding at 21. I've always had a need to have a mentor, still do, desperately. But there is no, not trying, anymore. Whenever I've an idea, I just stick on it, no matter, how long it takes for me to understand and execute. Starting with small things, and turning their activity into habits does the trick I guess, more than any amount of inspiration and motivation.

#RantOver

What I kind of regret is spending college time learning something I'm not really applying at least not that much and trying to learn code without success because of the really bad code teachers I had. A co-worker abandon college and started to learn code, he is 3 years younger than me and while I'm kind of not jr but neither sr developer he is already a sr and knows a lot of stuff, so yeah I kind of regret it but on the other hand I have other kind of knowledge, know my way through on creating startups and business, know about other important stuff like dealing with clients, making presentations, etc. So sometimes I do others I don't

When I was 8 years old, I told my parents I wanted to make video games and asked them to buy me a book I found on game design and C++. I think I tried to read through it, but couldn't understand anything. If I knew where to start from there, things could have turned out very different for me. Instead I set the book aside as something that I would probably understand when I'm older, and wound up throwing it away at some point. I didn't even have an interest in it again, until 2010/2011 when i was 20 years old, but again didn't know where to start. 2014(ish) Zach Sims from Codecademy came on to The Daily Show and said that you don't need to go to school to learn to code and that there are plenty of tutorials online. At that point I was a senior chemistry major but also decided I would take my first attempt at coding. 2 years later, I still feel like I'm at the tip of the iceberg, but try to spend at least an hour of my day working on either a project or doing an online course.

Yes at this point I wish I started earlier, but I also don't regret how I've spent my time.

I regret not being persistent. I had undiagnosed ADHD as a child and couldn't pay attention long enough to figure out how the hell Borland's C++ compiler (98 or 99?) worked, though somehow I managed to sit there and read through the entire "Sam's Teach Yourself C++ in 21 days book (though granted, I didn't retain much).

Well, I started very late. I did not attend technical high school or even college, but I have started learning it on my own when I was 23. And yes, I regret very much that it didn't come to me earlier in life and sometimes I wonder where could I have been and what could I have achieved by now. But better late than never :))

Well maybe, but i'm confortable with the age i start learn programming (more or less at 19-20-21 i think) and now i'm feeling nice with my knowledge and all the new things i'm learning :)

I started learning when I was 12, so it's hard to say, but I regret that I wasn't more focused on doing it seriously for money rather than just what I thought was fun. The pros now might be my variety of skills the cons are the yet lack of stable income since I haven't taken the step into it seriously and gone full time until a few years back.

Hmm. I started when I was 16 or 17. Tbh, I sometimes wish I would have started earlier, but thinking back I am glad I, on the one hand, had all the time to go outside, play with others, and on the other hand log into some MMORPG and just grind my skillz. I could do w/e I wanted. Well, my mother made me learn a lot for school, so I didn't have that much time. Spending all that time programming... I think it would have been pretty lonely.