How many hours are you programming and what age you started?

[kwstas13]

How many hours per day you programming and at what age you started?
In general how much time a programmer need to become actually good and at what age ?What's your opinion?
How much time did it take you to learn a language in that level so you can use it daily ?

[tidbit]

"How many hours per day you programming"
I don't make stuff everyday. on days that I do, maybe 3-5 hours
I can go weeks or months without doing anything major, just a few lines here-and-there for helping on IRC.

"and at what age you started?"
started at maybe 15 with GameMaker 5 and 6

"In general how much time a programmer need to become actually good and at what age ?What's your opinion?"
depends on how fast you learn and if there's any language barrier. I've seen some complete noobs on IRC who decided to hang around and in a couple months were very very good, in their mid-teens (13-18). But there's also those who have been around for years (2, 3, 5 or so) and still ask fairly beginner questions.

"Yoy can tell about the hours you are occupied with programming and the age you started to learn."
how is this different than your first question?

"How much time did it take you to learn a language that you use daily ?"
there's no answer to that. chances are no one knows everything about a language. even AHK. in ahk you can learn all the commands, but there's so much more with dllcalls and COM and whatnot. You will never know "everything".

[kwstas13]

Re edited thanks. I agree with you. So you started at 15 nice. I did start at 17

[nnnik]

I had my first tries on the age of 12. I didn't really achieve anything great with it though. But that greatly helped me getting my head around some fundamental logics later on.
I really started with 14 here at the forums.
Helping here or on IRC greatly improves your programming skill since you get challenged with a broad variety of problems.
However interest seems most important to me when getting to know new things.
As for languages, after you get to know a few you can adapt to a new language pretty fast.

[hoppfrosch]

I started with 17 on a Sinclair ZX80 in the early 1980's - this was back in the good old times when all the computer things started to get mass appeal.

The only language I learned systematically was Fortran77 - all other languages (Basic, Pascal, Lisp, C, C++, Python, Perl) I learned on my own (never systematically nor perfect, but always enough to master my jobs)

As for languages, after you get to know a few you can adapt to a new language pretty fast.

I totally agree with this. I would like to express this even stronger: the main focus shouldn't be mastering a lot of languages, but a deep understanding of basic concepts (like data models, design patterns, algorithms, ....) Having a deep understanding of this and knowledge of 2-3 languages , the choosen language is just a vehicle towards the solution, which should/could be choosen according it's possibilities to achieve the solution "most comfortable" (even if you don't know the choosen language yet perfectly)

[joedf]

I started when I was 12 or 13; when I got my first computer for my birthday and maybe a few months later there was an older edition of book about C programming. It was on sale for 2$ technically, I first learned programming when a friend of mine introduced me to the Ti-83/84 basic. It later got more serious and in depth with C on my PC. I got into AHK maybe around 2011-2012, so maybe 16 yrs old. It took me awhile to get the hang of it, but I fell in love with it. I love combining C and AHK together. They are my 2 most favoured languages. :3