Yes! this was about 12 years ago, when I was just a little 10 year old girl. I was very lazy even back then. And the funny thing is, even after 12 years, I still haven’t changed!
My dad wanted me to become an engineer, so he got me a PC. He thought I would learn coding on it… but little did he know, I was actually preparing to become a gamer.
After getting a PC, I used to play games day and night. I neither studied nor did any other work. Seeing this, my dad found it really strange. He often wondered, “Will this girl ever be able to fulfill my dream?” And honestly, at that time, the answer was a definite no. I had wasted an entire year because of gaming. My dad thought that I had to do something now, but what seemed easy from the outside was actually not that easy.
Once, while I was playing a game, my dad came to me and said, There’s an event where 19 children are participating. You don’t have to do anything—just write the ‘Hello World’ code in Java.
I really liked participating in competitions, but being an introvert, I made a mistake. I had practiced for it at home as well, but when I sat in front of all those people, I made a mistake in my code. I could have solved it, but my fear increased so much that I couldn’t think of anything at that moment.
Just like when we turn off the lights at night and run because we feel like some ghost is chasing us , I was feeling exactly the same way. I was so scared that my brain literally stopped working. And in the end, the code wouldn’t run either, so I just gave up. The code won, I lost.
So, I went home and wrote my first “Hello, World!” program—because my ego had been hurt. That’s how I took my first step into programming.
public class HelloWorld {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello, World!");
}
}
Top comments (23)
The pink Godzilla roaring on the cover — is that a hint that Godzilla is actually a girl? Hahaha.
The experience you described at the start is pretty much the same as mine, except it was me who brought up buying a computer at home. My reason was that I could use it for studying. And yeah, back when I wanted a cartridge-based Famicom, I'd told my parents it was for learning English too. So when the computer finally arrived, the first thing I did was download an online game called MU and start playing. Then all kinds of games after that — Resident Evil, Call of Duty, Half-Life, Red Alert, Age of Empires, StarCraft, the Ys series. Basically, if my first laptop could run it, I tried it.
To be honest, I didn't seriously learn programming until college, and it really only took off after my first year of working. Before that I'd just done "hello world" in a bunch of languages. I always hated how tedious Java was, and loved how elegant Python is.
Really enjoyable article — made me reminisce for a long while. /woof
Wait, is your vacation over already? Hahaha🤣
Godzilla be like: “Who the hell are you?”
By the way, everyone knows that you’re a huge gamer. Your journey is pretty hilarious. You could say you’re on a whole different level—the kind of person who can do anything for gaming.
And if you like Python more than Java, Java is going to cry a lot, so say it quietly.
And yeah, I’m managing both my holidays and work at the same time. I have four hands, you know.
By the way, I have a question—actually, two. First, for Curious and Xulingfeng: How many hours do engineers usually work in China?
And second, for the Wise Old Sage: In Chinese, when do you use “you” in the casual sense versus the respectful sense? I mean, how do you address younger people compared to older people, and what’s the difference between the two?
Generally speaking, a normal workday is about 8 hours. For example, I start at 9am, take a break from 12 to 1:30pm, and leave at 6pm — that's 40 hours a week. But that's the ideal case. Some companies have pretty heavy overtime, it really depends on the company. When things get busy you work overtime; sometimes upgrading systems means doing it in the middle of the night. I've been through all of that.
As for the difference between "你" and "您" — simply put, use "您" for older people, like people who clearly look like grandpas and grandmas. Use "你" for everyone else. Or, for guys you can just call them "帅哥" (handsome guy) and girls "美女" (beautiful girl) — it's a common casual way of addressing people in China, haha. But it also depends on the situation.😅
好吧，那我可以称呼我的爷爷、奶奶、姥姥和太姥姥为“您”，所有的男性朋友都可以叫“帅哥”，女性朋友都可以叫“美女”。但是，我应该怎么称呼Arjun呢？😂
一般朋友的话直接叫名字或绰号，帅哥美女一般是对不是很熟的人才叫，比如路上问路的时候。Arjun是？😅
What was your question? Was it “Who is Arjun?” or “Arjun is”? My Chinese is a little weak, so I just want to make sure I understand correctly and give you the right answer. 😅
who is Arjun?
I want to tell you, but I don’t know why I just can’t say it 🤣🤣
😅
“the code won, I lost” 😂
Honestly, that might be the most relatable way to start a programming journey. Nothing like getting humbled by Hello World and then coming back just because your ego said “not today” 😭
Yeah correctly memorizing
public static void main(String[] args)the first time around is indeed an impressive feat (and I'm not even being sarcastic)!Remember how we went from writing C/C++ to writing Java and all yelling "my god this is so easy!!" ? And then J2EE (Java Enterprise) came on the scene - how quickly those "it's so easy!!" feelings evaporated ;-)
Oh, absolutely! C/C++ had already tested our patience, then Java came along and we thought, “Finally! We’ve figured out programming!”
And then J2EE quietly walked in like, “Oh really? You’re feeling confident?” 💀
We memorized
public static void main(String[] args)and suddenly thought we had unlocked the secrets of software engineering. 🤣 Then enterprise Java taught us that knowing the syntax and actually understanding a system are two completely different things.Looking back, that whole “Java is so easy!” phase was probably one of programming’s greatest illusions.
Programming gave us confidence first; J2EE gave us character development later. 🤣
Haha yes :-)
Java on the frontend (applets, remember them?) was more or less completely useless - I think the point of those applets was to draw people in, like "look how cool this is!" ;-)
Where Java truly became a 'force factor' was on the backend - J2EE, and later Spring ...
Spring was a bit more lightweight, but still REALLY complex with all those components you had to wire together via these gruesome XML files ...
And my god how over-engineered it all was, with these class loaders and with endless "patterns" and abstractions on top of abstractions on top of abstractions ...
I made very decent money being a Java dev for years, but I didn't really regret moving on to more lightweight languages/frameworks!
Java, the new COBOL :-)
This reminded me a lot of my own journey 😂
I actually started coding in 6th grade after getting interested because my brother, who was in 7th grade at the time, was building websites.
From there, I got completely hooked. I started learning web development and eventually built quite a few projects — 2 social media platforms with Node.js, 2 generative AI models in Python, a Quora clone, a link-in-bio platform, a link shortener, a Coolors clone, a cdnjs clone, and a bunch of other random things.
The funny (and slightly painful) part is that most of these projects barely got any users — usually around 30–50. And whenever I saw those numbers, instead of trying to improve them, I would just delete the project and move on 😂
Looking back, I think building the projects was never really the hard part for me. Learning how to get people to actually use them — and having the patience to keep going when nobody does — was the real challenge.
Still, I guess all those “failed” projects taught me something. And honestly, I probably wouldn’t have learned nearly as much without building and deleting all those things along the way.
I hope you are doing well.
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Funny how many programming careers probably started with some version of “this stupid thing is not going to beat me.” 😂
The first program failing in public must have felt terrible at 10, but going home and writing it again because your ego was hurt is probably the best part of the story. Curiosity gets you started, but stubbornness keeps you debugging.
In the end, you didn’t lose to the code. You just lost the first round. 😄
This is a great share, thanks! There's no straight path, is there? lol But it can be a fun one!
True!
I love that the first “Hello, World!” came after the failed competition attempt. Sometimes that little frustration of “I know I can do this” is exactly what pushes us to try again. Funny how something that felt like losing at the time ended up being the start of a whole programming journey ❤️
Wow, this is such a motivating story. I really liked the part about ego.
For someone who claims to be lazy, refusing to let Hello World win twelve years ago. is a suspicious amount of persistence. 🙂
Calling myself lazy actually feels pretty good.
Thanks for reading! :D
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