January 1, 2026
Code origin stories get spicy
Ask HN: How did you learn to code?
From calculator hacks to chatroom chaos, coders confess their origins
TLDR: A coder learned by tinkering with an old DOS machine, discovering QBASIC and a debugger, and called it “alchemy.” The comments exploded into origin confessions—TI‑83 hacks, AOL chat games, Neopets tricks—debating whether anyone truly learns coding or just wings it until it clicks, proving curiosity is king.
One poster set the tone with a wild origin story: alone with an ancient PC, a mysterious “C:\” prompt, and sheer curiosity. They poked around MS‑DOS, stumbled into built‑in QBASIC game examples, and reverse‑engineered their way from variables and loops to the dark arts of the DEBUG tool. Stepping through system utilities turned into a crash course in assembler (low‑level machine instructions), and later old‑school BBS demos taught them graphics tricks. They don’t recommend writing assembler in DEBUG—yet wouldn’t trade the “felt like alchemy” vibes for anything.
The comments lit up like a LAN party. One camp confessed impostor syndrome: “I don’t feel like I ever learned how to code,” said ipnon, after Flash lasers, Python, and JavaScript. The calculator gang chimed in with TI‑83 after‑school hacks, while the AOL chat room crew bragged about Visual Basic 6 pranks and “script kiddie” mischief. The Neopets nation admitted to “hacking” school PCs by setting HTML folder backgrounds, and a VB6 Yahtzee built from a “giant nested if” became the thread’s meme. Strongest opinion? Curiosity beats classes. Hottest take? You can ship code without understanding it. Drama? A playful tug‑of‑war over what counts as “real code”—alchemy, calculators, or chaos—served with nostalgia and punchlines.
Key Points
- •The author began coding on an offline 286 PC that booted to a C:\ prompt, exploring the system without external resources.
- •They learned core programming concepts by studying and modifying example games bundled with QBASIC in MS-DOS.
- •Using the MS-DOS DEBUG tool, they stepped through system utilities to understand assembler and machine code.
- •Access to BBSs later enabled them to debug and disassemble small assembler mini-demos, teaching graphics memory manipulation.
- •They do not recommend writing assembler in DEBUG, but highlight the value of exploratory reverse engineering as a learning method.