late 50s

64

This would make a good poll.

Old enough to know better but young enough not to care.

30s

52, started coding when I was 12 but doing mostly sysop/admin things now

I forgot to say I'm 25 myself, started coding like 2 years ago maybe, that said, I'm not a coder. I vibe code only.

About to turn 64. Started coding on paper in the early 70s, on a home machine in 1978.

20

Early 30s

I am turning 37 soon.

Turned 40 this year. Started coding as a teenager but didn't work with it until more recently.

23, coming up on 24.

37, coding since 12

I’m 48, started as a web dev at age 30. I’ve been at a non-profit for quite awhile so not big tech and not big tech $ but I like my job and coworkers.

Older side of Gen X. Very likely old enough to be your father, somewhat likely old enough to be your grandfather.

Late 20s

32

Roughly 40

Close to 50. Been programming for fun since I was 6, for a living since I was 19. And now, thanks to LLMs, I'm thinking of leaving that behind and becoming the world's oldest apprentice electrician.

54

61, got into computing just after toggle switches, punch cards and paper tape, thank goodness.

I was, however ready to swear on a stack of Bibles in 1981 when I picked my major, that there was no money to be made in software. It looked like shareware was going to take over the world and drive the cost to almost zero.

Moore's law was an awesome ride, and I think we've got at least a 100:1 improvement left in efficiency.

80

Almost 40

71. So far, the oldest to respond. Only a tiny minority of readers are likely to respond, though. And all you will learn from the responses is the age disribition of that tiny minority! Who knows how well that correlates with the totality of HN users?

Turning 37 in two days. =D

Been programming since I was 12. The passion has never left. <333

34. I am programming since the age of 13. Still love it <3

45

I’m 34 and I’d say the 30s plus demo is what comments most here. I don’t know many peers who read HN regularly either even though I know a lot of engineers and founders in SV.

44! Got into programming in my early teens. Landing my first dev job at 19. Still love it.

39

64

33, working on web projects since I was around 12 or 13.

Mid 30s, started writing code 20 years ago, totally hooked since day one.

Mid-50s

I'm a few months shy of 48. I've been writing code since I learned to write BASIC games and utilities on my TI-82 in high school, ca. 1993. I still love coding, but it's getting harder and harder to make a living doing it.

You should have created a poll instead of a question. I know HN supports poll

40s

40's

Why make it easy? When I was in middle school, we had WiFi at home before we got off dialup. I spent some days trying to figure out how to bridge the two before we got cable broadband. We also got our first cell phones as a family a year later, a couple of Sprint flip-phones with extendable antennas.

50s. When everyone else was getting Atari's I got a Commodore Vic20 and how to write software games book (My parents were both in software startups starting in the late 70s). Did software, burnt out, moved to IT management, ended up blowing my life up, now I'm completely f'd. 50/50 poor work/life balance combined with poor homelife, both feeding the other. It's interesting to have seen American life from the struggling 80s middle class that made genX latch key, to the top and now to the bottom.

28.

65

Age 77.. started with Fortran in '68 on an IBM1130, assembler on a Linc-8 in '70, then at UofWaterloo on IBM360/75 with (omg) 3MB ram. Then scientific programming mostly Fortran or asm, switched to turbo Pascal in 88-89, then Delphi and MATLAB. Currently mainly work in VsCode using markdown codeblocks in a way a bit like Jupyter (see VsCode extension Hover-Exec) for a range of stuff including art installations.