Welcome to the 30 Day Challenge for July, where we’ll be looking at the STEM fields: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. I originally conceived of the as the Science & Math Challenge so those two categories will get more attention, but we will touch on all of them.

Today we want to know about your first experiences with computer programming. While perhaps a less universal experience than learning science or math, many students do get some (often token) exposure to programming somewhere in their educational careers. Did you? What language did you use for your first program? What other languages have you used? If computer programming is part of your life as an adult, what languages and tools do you use?

Since computer technology has changed so much over most of our lifetimes, it’s interesting to know what eras we are talking about. If you feel comfortable doing so, give us an approximate time frame for your experiences.

Bonus: Talk about your formative experiences with other computer science-y tools: spreadsheets, databases, robotics, etc.