In my freshman year of high school (14 years old) our neighbor hosted a foreign exchange student. He showed me how to write HTML on GeoCities.
My first page was black background with a list of things I liked, each item separated by an <hr />. I distinctly remember a picture of Wolverine from the X-Men being on that page...
From there I grabbed and (I think illegally?) installed a copy of Visual Studio 6 and learned the basics of structs & classes.
My school had a computer programming elective track where the 1st class was VB, the 2nd was C++, and the 3rd was for AP classes to get Computer Science credits for college.
When I got to college, I forwent doing a CS degree, but was able to get a job (thanks to a friend) working for the school's web development department. I loved that job. It learned so much about JavaScript and HTML (and PHP) in a real-world environment.
But my degree was in Political Science and I was ready to graduate. I had to apply to graduate and couldn't do it. Being a lawyer just didn't feel right. So I took on more debt, finished the CS degree in a year, and have never regretted the decision.
My first job out of school was working for the US Dept of the Navy. I wasn't doing real programming and hated that job. I made the jump to a DoD contractor in 2013 and moved to a commercial (non-defense) company in 2017.
All along I've been learning and learning. There is no profession that is more perfect for me than this. It's a passion that I get to make money doing!
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In my freshman year of high school (14 years old) our neighbor hosted a foreign exchange student. He showed me how to write HTML on GeoCities.
My first page was black background with a list of things I liked, each item separated by an
<hr />. I distinctly remember a picture of Wolverine from the X-Men being on that page...From there I grabbed and (I think illegally?) installed a copy of Visual Studio 6 and learned the basics of structs & classes.
My school had a computer programming elective track where the 1st class was VB, the 2nd was C++, and the 3rd was for AP classes to get Computer Science credits for college.
When I got to college, I forwent doing a CS degree, but was able to get a job (thanks to a friend) working for the school's web development department. I loved that job. It learned so much about JavaScript and HTML (and PHP) in a real-world environment.
But my degree was in Political Science and I was ready to graduate. I had to apply to graduate and couldn't do it. Being a lawyer just didn't feel right. So I took on more debt, finished the CS degree in a year, and have never regretted the decision.
My first job out of school was working for the US Dept of the Navy. I wasn't doing real programming and hated that job. I made the jump to a DoD contractor in 2013 and moved to a commercial (non-defense) company in 2017.
All along I've been learning and learning. There is no profession that is more perfect for me than this. It's a passion that I get to make money doing!