What got you interested in programming?

Hey everyone,
I was thinking about this recently and got curious about how other people got started with programming.
For me, it seems like everyone has a different story. Some people learned it for work, some for a personal project, and others just started out of curiosity.
What was the thing that first got you interested in programming?
I'd be interested to hear how you started and what kept you going when things got difficult.
Looking forward to reading your replies.
Thanks!

It started out of curiosity and making my life easier by automating reptitive tasks; and over time I ended up creating little things that really helped save time and money
The driving factor behid all that is the instant gratification of knowing that something works and crashing less often

It started out of curiosity because my friend are kind of using it to make work faster and easy so i tried learning it but it kind of not my thing so i stopped but i know the basics which is fine by me

For me it was purely about cutting costs. I wanted to scrape some niche directories back in the day and the off-the-shelf tools were either too expensive or kept breaking. So I forced myself to learn python just to write a basic scraper. That feeling when you finally get a clean csv after hours of troubleshooting... nothing beats it. @ryancopper is right about the instant gratification part, even if my early scripts were messy as hell. Knowing that a couple lines of code saved me days of manual clicking was what kept me hooked.

For me it was mostly about speed and not wanting to rely on freelancers who always disappeared halfway through a project. i was trying to set up landing pages and redirect scripts back in the day and got tired of waiting days for simple fixes. learnt some basic php and js just to patch things together. what @SMM Junction said about scraping is so true... once you realize you can scrape your own targets or automate the boring stuff without paying some agency, there is no going back. honestly my code is still a total mess but as long as it gets the job done i dont really care.

Mine was less “I want to be a dev” and more “why am I paying for stuff I can probably glue together myself”. Started with ugly PHP edits, then Python for cleaning lead lists, checking pages, sorting data, that kinda boring stuff.

The thing that keeps people going imo is when code stops being theory and becomes leverage. Even a trash script that saves 3 hours teaches you faster than watching 20 tutorials. Biggest wall is accepting your first version will be embarrasing, but if it runs, you can fix it later.

mine was kinda accidental. i was running a small affiliate thing years back and excel just couldnt keep up with the data i was throwing at it. spent a whole weekend fighting with python just to merge a few csvs and i remember being so proud of this ugly script that probably 5 lines could have done better.

what kept me going honestly was stubborness more than passion. like i refused to let a stupid bug win. half the time i didnt even understand why something worked, i just knew it did and moved on.

funny thing nobody mentions... the boring repetitive stuff teaches you the most. everyone wants to build some big app but cleaning lead lists and fixing broken cron jobs at 2am is where you actually learn. tutorials never stick the same way real frustration does imo.

Creating has always been interesting to me every since I was a youngin. The ability to be able to manipulate and/or craft components that can based on the level of creativity and knowledge become something much larger will always intrigue me. The fact that there is endless possibility for some can be daunting but I find my obsessive traits are best served here, trying to find the lines and boundaries and continues pursuit of improvement.

There were no good games so I decided to create one myself

Coding my own funnel pages because I was sick of not being able to have one click upsells.

Now I use a different tool but that was my main reason.

Oh and of course programming my AI girlfriend.