I started programming in PHP doing web development. I started on Windows ME/XP and primarily used FTP to a free PHP host. After a while I learned to setup PHP/Apache/MySQL on my desktop and continue withing just an editor. Never once really touched the Window cmd.exe. After playing with PHP for a long time I started learning about different frameworks. The one I picked up and used the CodeIgniter. The first time I really heard about using a CLI was when I was reading about frameworks and came across Zend. It was annoying to me that I needed to use some "weird" command line to generate files. Why couldn't I just make them in my editor?

It wasn't until I installed linux that I really started to play with any CLI. I honestly don't remember what got me into linux at the moment. I do remember one of the first things I did was learn to setup the system using a tutorial on howtoforge.com. I went through those tutorial many of times setting up my computer.

I was an avid gamer at the time, so I also had my desktop setup to dual boot Windows. After a while I got tired of switching between the two so I ended up taking an old Dell Optiplex 110 installing CentOS on it and trying to get Samba to work so I could mount my web directories on my Windows machine and still edit them, while having Apache serve them.

I did that for a while, then got a job and bought hosting with shell access.