I posted here the headlines of how I got into dev. My path is convoluted, but here it goes.
I got a computer at home around age 12 for getting all As (something I did not frequently do up to that point, and Dad probably didn't expect to have to pony up). It was an old 386 from Dad's business, and my first and only interested use for it was to play a Sierra game called Hero's Quest (later renamed Quest for Glory) that came on 4 floppies. At roughly zero computer knowledge, I had to call my friend who gave it to me to ask him how to start the game.
I started asking about this thing called DOS, and my Dad would refer me to an MS-DOS 5 manual and tell me to read it instead of asking him. It was like Greek to me, but after reading the same thing enough times (and not much else to do), I started to conceptualize files and directories. Batch files were my first scripting experience. I stayed up all weekend with my friend writing about 12 screens of a text adventure game as a batch file, required to be played thru on every boot before you could do anything. With some extra prompting in order to proceed into the evil realm of Windows 3.1. My friend's dad was not amused.
I spent the next little bit mostly gaming on computers when I could, but sometimes taking an old computer apart with my friend to figure out what the parts did and how to tweak DOS. I had 2 programming courses in high school. GW Basic and Pascal. Having already some experience with control structures, goto, and looping from the esoteric DOS batch stuff, those classes were pretty easy for me. But I didn't fall in love programming or anything. I still wanted to focus more on hardware and OS stuff.
After working age, I did fast food and manual labor mostly (small town, pre or just-emerging internet, so not a lot of tech opportunities). Found some brief computer tech work in between. Went to college for a couple of years and quit, but worked as a tech while there. Came back home and eventually I found a job as PC support which transitioned from part time to full time. Was also taught Windows sys admin stuff by my boss so I could back him up if he was busy. The company wanted an internal VB program rewritten as a web app, and I was not very busy so they tasked me with it. I was at that point just learning and very opinionated toward linux. So I wrote it in on LAMP stack, as PHP was quick to pick up.
My employer later went bankrupt, and I got laid off. Living on my own, I survived somehow on a little contract work and a lot of single-meal days (and hard core gaming). Got serious about going back to college and eventually became old enough to get financial aid without parents, who already wasted a lot of their own money on my a college education. Through a connection at the local computer store, I was offered a one-off contract programming job, which I did. Later, Dad hired me full time (maybe $7/hr?) to write an ordering program for him. Those were tough days of procedural programming, and it felt like my brain was fried every day. Finished that after a year or so (and is still in use today) and then went to work part time as a sys admin for same company that previously subcontracted me for that one-off programming job.
It was at this point that I picked up VB.NET because it was more familiar to their main software contractor, who developed their internal system in VB6. I wrote a bunch of small .NET web apps during this time as well as my sysadmin / networking duties. I worked 3 part-time jobs and went to college at night.
Eventually graduated and went to work in the corporate world. Did sysadmin and HPC admin of linux systems for about a year. Wanted to be a network engineer, and they let me experience it a little. Decided it wasn't for me, especially the travel. Had to do a bit of Bash scripting for the HPC stuff b/c there were hundreds of nodes. Did a little further PHP dev for some internal tools. Having experience and demonstrated inclination for programming, the company moved me into a stalled development project in .NET. After that point, my career shifted permanently to full-time dev work, and sysadmin only sometimes.
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I posted here the headlines of how I got into dev. My path is convoluted, but here it goes.
I got a computer at home around age 12 for getting all As (something I did not frequently do up to that point, and Dad probably didn't expect to have to pony up). It was an old 386 from Dad's business, and my first and only interested use for it was to play a Sierra game called Hero's Quest (later renamed Quest for Glory) that came on 4 floppies. At roughly zero computer knowledge, I had to call my friend who gave it to me to ask him how to start the game.
I started asking about this thing called DOS, and my Dad would refer me to an MS-DOS 5 manual and tell me to read it instead of asking him. It was like Greek to me, but after reading the same thing enough times (and not much else to do), I started to conceptualize files and directories. Batch files were my first scripting experience. I stayed up all weekend with my friend writing about 12 screens of a text adventure game as a batch file, required to be played thru on every boot before you could do anything. With some extra prompting in order to proceed into the evil realm of Windows 3.1. My friend's dad was not amused.
I spent the next little bit mostly gaming on computers when I could, but sometimes taking an old computer apart with my friend to figure out what the parts did and how to tweak DOS. I had 2 programming courses in high school. GW Basic and Pascal. Having already some experience with control structures, goto, and looping from the esoteric DOS batch stuff, those classes were pretty easy for me. But I didn't fall in love programming or anything. I still wanted to focus more on hardware and OS stuff.
After working age, I did fast food and manual labor mostly (small town, pre or just-emerging internet, so not a lot of tech opportunities). Found some brief computer tech work in between. Went to college for a couple of years and quit, but worked as a tech while there. Came back home and eventually I found a job as PC support which transitioned from part time to full time. Was also taught Windows sys admin stuff by my boss so I could back him up if he was busy. The company wanted an internal VB program rewritten as a web app, and I was not very busy so they tasked me with it. I was at that point just learning and very opinionated toward linux. So I wrote it in on LAMP stack, as PHP was quick to pick up.
My employer later went bankrupt, and I got laid off. Living on my own, I survived somehow on a little contract work and a lot of single-meal days (and hard core gaming). Got serious about going back to college and eventually became old enough to get financial aid without parents, who already wasted a lot of their own money on my a college education. Through a connection at the local computer store, I was offered a one-off contract programming job, which I did. Later, Dad hired me full time (maybe $7/hr?) to write an ordering program for him. Those were tough days of procedural programming, and it felt like my brain was fried every day. Finished that after a year or so (and is still in use today) and then went to work part time as a sys admin for same company that previously subcontracted me for that one-off programming job.
It was at this point that I picked up VB.NET because it was more familiar to their main software contractor, who developed their internal system in VB6. I wrote a bunch of small .NET web apps during this time as well as my sysadmin / networking duties. I worked 3 part-time jobs and went to college at night.
Eventually graduated and went to work in the corporate world. Did sysadmin and HPC admin of linux systems for about a year. Wanted to be a network engineer, and they let me experience it a little. Decided it wasn't for me, especially the travel. Had to do a bit of Bash scripting for the HPC stuff b/c there were hundreds of nodes. Did a little further PHP dev for some internal tools. Having experience and demonstrated inclination for programming, the company moved me into a stalled development project in .NET. After that point, my career shifted permanently to full-time dev work, and sysadmin only sometimes.