What got you into programming? What do you program for? What kinds of programs do you make?
For me, I'm into programming video games. As my math skills improved, I studied game mechanics in such great detail (right down to the algorithms used) and from repeatedly playing games for dozens or even hundreds of hours, I've always wanted to make my own game. Programming was confusing at first, but that changed in late 2004. I used a tool called Gamestudio, but it was highly limited in what I can do and there are other annoyances as well. I released "The Interactive Animation", my first program which met the main goal (explaining and demonstrating the effects of background scaling, as it is when I make my animated GIFs (I've been making animated GIFs since late 2001 or so). I later refined the first program and it became my first true game, The Supernatural Olympics. I was constantly getting frustrated with Gamestudio's only variable type and its low range and accuracy and by release, I had it. I've always wanted to add slopes, objects, pitched gliding, dynamic fog, and many other enhancements not even possible with Gamestudio (either due to limitations or the single variable type). Lite-C was an upcoming feature based heavily on C (rather than a heavily simplified C and javascript-like mix) which would support many more things, but I felt as if learning C would be faster and I'd be able to do more. I now only need to get past the basic things like what Windows functions I use and once I get this, pretty much any 2D game is within my reach even something as complex as an RPG game (like Final Fantasy 7, only 2D and my own creation instead). I also have two 3D games planned (one abandoned, one stalled), but 3D is not familiar territory to me.
Outside games, other programs I make are to automate some tasks. When I process my music for my MP3 player, I need dozens of WAV files with only the sample rate changed to convert to MP3 (since there's no other way to change the speed). I wrote a program to generate these WAV files which is over 12 times faster than doing it manually (one file every 1.6 seconds instead of every 20 seconds, writing 50 MiB/sec). The other is to brighten and crop video frames (as BMP images) for my videos I record of stunts I do in my video games (like getting tossed up at 2400 mph in Super Monkey Ball 2 and attempting to make the goal (the clock is disabled, the only cheat used or needed)).
