Originally Posted by Xrystal
Thats how most of us started out if not all of us  |
^^ This, especially when it comes to addons. Most of the career programmers that I've met started out by monkeying with other people's code, then moved on to write their own once they were comfortable and confident enough to do so.
As for me, I started writing code right after I turned 7 years old...on punch cards
I initially tinkered with disassembled game code on a mainframe (we didn't have many games back then) to try to "beat" a specific game, then just kept going after that. Before I knew it, I was writing programs to make an entire lab of minicomputers all play "Flight of the Bumble Bee" at the same time on their "trouble alert buzzers"...which earned me a lovely ban from that lab
Now that I'm orbiting 40, I still love tinkering with other people's code as much as writing my own. 16+ languages in my skull, countless lines of code written, and a variety of application genres (game addons to kernel code to server firmware) under my belt and I still enjoy it. Personally, I was always a "take it apart and see how it works" type, so it fits well for me (probably why I'm considering going back to school to study physics and mathematics *grins*).
It's very much a creative enterprise and I'm always thrilled to see other people attracted to it at a younger age like I was. In my opinion, it's a great outlet for energy and creativity that can turn into a solid career in the future, if you choose to go that route and enjoy it.