It all started at the age of 12, around year 2007 when I discovered how fun was to play online games and how different the play was from bots.
I then started to look into "tweaking" client application, and modding.
I end up on Computer Science school where I expected to have some serious coding stuff.
It wasn't enough for me, when I realized that period in school was a good moment to start investing my time on w3schools.
Still, I'm in this momentum where I'm currently working as a Web developer and investing my bits of spare time on something else like C++, backend stuff, devops.
I love my job and I believe that if you do what you love, you never work a single day :)
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Started out teaching English at Embry-Riddle. Graded 10,000 essays. Learned lesson. Became a mathematics teacher. Discovered computing. Never looked back.
Location
Houston TX
Education
Stetson University: B.A., M.A. in English; M.S. in mathematics
When I was teaching mathematics, I wanted to generate tests for my students -- each test different but equivalent. So taught myself Fortran (yes, this was back in the day) and went to work. The college's computers were a System/3 and a PDP-11, which I could use only in the computer room itself and in off hours. Input: punch cards; output: line printer.
When I was 5, my family got a Commodore 64. We did not have a disk drive at first, but we did have a subscription to RUN Magazine, so I learned how to type in other peoples' programs pretty early on. Pretty quickly I decided I wanted to understand how the programs work and how to make my own, and it all just kind of snowballed from there.
I was interested in electronics and computers, from an electronics kit I had (springs to hold jumper wire between components).
My Dad had learned some BASIC to do things like make maintenance schedules for his job in the Air Force. He gave me his Que book on Q-BASIC and helped me get DOS 6.22 running. Then I started with some example programs.
I remember a game as one of the examples. Monkeys destroying buildings by throwing bananas :)
My first coding experience was in school. With BASIC. And not the Visual Basic. We had to write line numbers (!) and use GOTO. I think, the first program was 10 lines long and it printed something on the screen in a loop. It was fun but I certainly did not take programming seriously at that point because it felt utterly stupid.
The I got into uni, studying IT. The first semester we learned how to program on paper and blackboard and drew tons of block-schemes. It was fun again, but I still did not see how to translate it into real life.
Then there were algorithmic challenges and puzzles as an after-class activity for those who were interested. It was fun, but no different from riddles.
Then a few years of fundamental stuff mixed with outdated tech mixed with useless subjects mixed with stress and depression... I got my degree and sweared to myself never to touch code again.
Until I got to a master's program, which is a totally different story. :D
My father bought an Amstrad CPC 464 and I starte to follow the manual. Still remember that you could watch it paint every single Pixel of a circle. And I remember the sound of loading programs from tape...
I was a browser game addict back then. I loved them. One day I decided that I want to build my own - of course I never finished any - but I had a few players on my own games. Mostly testers. It was fun and I just couldn't stop programming. Then I started playing Minecraft. I started my own server (Bukkit) and server side programming hooked me. Nowadays I am doing all kind of web stuff and I still love doing it :) Best of all, it is my hobby and I make a living out of my hobby!
I am working hard to implement an idea and launch my own product. Too bad I am a noob at designing and creating unique products :D
Latest comments (50)
It all started at the age of 12, around year 2007 when I discovered how fun was to play online games and how different the play was from bots.
I then started to look into "tweaking" client application, and modding.
I end up on Computer Science school where I expected to have some serious coding stuff.
It wasn't enough for me, when I realized that period in school was a good moment to start investing my time on w3schools.
Still, I'm in this momentum where I'm currently working as a Web developer and investing my bits of spare time on something else like C++, backend stuff, devops.
I love my job and I believe that if you do what you love, you never work a single day :)
I was 13 or 14 when building a website for my band. I neither knew how to properly align elements nor how to copy & paste.
So, I sat there and was manually typing
...all the time just to center some images etc.'few years back' XD sololearn is that old
I started coding through code challenge websites like codeforces, codechef and topcoder
I started only after my college and then got interested in front end web development and ended up in web and mobile development for years.
When I was teaching mathematics, I wanted to generate tests for my students -- each test different but equivalent. So taught myself Fortran (yes, this was back in the day) and went to work. The college's computers were a System/3 and a PDP-11, which I could use only in the computer room itself and in off hours. Input: punch cards; output: line printer.
When I was 5, my family got a Commodore 64. We did not have a disk drive at first, but we did have a subscription to RUN Magazine, so I learned how to type in other peoples' programs pretty early on. Pretty quickly I decided I wanted to understand how the programs work and how to make my own, and it all just kind of snowballed from there.
I was interested in electronics and computers, from an electronics kit I had (springs to hold jumper wire between components).
My Dad had learned some BASIC to do things like make maintenance schedules for his job in the Air Force. He gave me his Que book on Q-BASIC and helped me get DOS 6.22 running. Then I started with some example programs.
I remember a game as one of the examples. Monkeys destroying buildings by throwing bananas :)
My first coding experience was in school. With BASIC. And not the Visual Basic. We had to write line numbers (!) and use GOTO. I think, the first program was 10 lines long and it printed something on the screen in a loop. It was fun but I certainly did not take programming seriously at that point because it felt utterly stupid.
The I got into uni, studying IT. The first semester we learned how to program on paper and blackboard and drew tons of block-schemes. It was fun again, but I still did not see how to translate it into real life.
Then there were algorithmic challenges and puzzles as an after-class activity for those who were interested. It was fun, but no different from riddles.
Then a few years of fundamental stuff mixed with outdated tech mixed with useless subjects mixed with stress and depression... I got my degree and sweared to myself never to touch code again.
Until I got to a master's program, which is a totally different story. :D
My father bought an Amstrad CPC 464 and I starte to follow the manual. Still remember that you could watch it paint every single Pixel of a circle. And I remember the sound of loading programs from tape...
I was a browser game addict back then. I loved them. One day I decided that I want to build my own - of course I never finished any - but I had a few players on my own games. Mostly testers. It was fun and I just couldn't stop programming. Then I started playing Minecraft. I started my own server (Bukkit) and server side programming hooked me. Nowadays I am doing all kind of web stuff and I still love doing it :) Best of all, it is my hobby and I make a living out of my hobby!
I am working hard to implement an idea and launch my own product. Too bad I am a noob at designing and creating unique products :D