Played with QBasic when I was a kid, took a Java course, hacked on HTML/CSS/jQuery for my radio station and got a job writing code at a web shop after college.
What really got me "over the hump" was deciding one weekend that I needed to focus if I was going to be able to bring my ideas to life (www.sampl.us). I got Javascript, The Good Parts on Amazon and just hammered on the basics of the language over the course of a few weekends. I kept at it over the next few weeks, and I've come back to it in bursts ever since. Never fails to be one of the most rewarding and frustrating parts of my week.
Five years later, I'm still a pretty mediocre programmer. But now when I can have an idea, I get to watch it become real. It's a good feeling :)
What really got me "over the hump" was deciding one weekend that I needed to focus if I was going to be able to bring my ideas to life (www.sampl.us). I got Javascript, The Good Parts on Amazon and just hammered on the basics of the language over the course of a few weekends. I kept at it over the next few weeks, and I've come back to it in bursts ever since. Never fails to be one of the most rewarding and frustrating parts of my week.
Five years later, I'm still a pretty mediocre programmer. But now when I can have an idea, I get to watch it become real. It's a good feeling :)