The New Road

38th Birthday

Today is officially my birthday, which means I'm celebrating...

(Insert cheesy graphic here.) My 25th anniversary of being a software engineer. I started hacking when I was thirteen years old on Andy Baker's Model I TRS-80 in Microsoft BASIC. I held my first job when I was 15 (unpaid) writing software for bidding PCs. My first paid job was when I was 16 writing in Fortran 77 and C on UNIX (v7) for Samuel Berkowitz.

Twenty five years is an awful long time to be doing one type of job, let me tell you. What's helped me is that I have a passion for it. I write programs even when I'm not getting paid to. I'm one of those kind of "I'd be writing code even if they didn't pay me" types. Though I add, "Though I'm sure I wouldn't be writing this code if i weren't getting paid."

I really love this work though, and I thank my lucky stars for it. What other profession would give a dyslexic C grade student who never went to college the opportunity to put food on his family for 25 years and to write three books. And what's more is, I don't think it's a fluke of timing. I think software engineering is a field where if you a reasonably bright, resourceful, innovative and driven you can go as far as you want to and nobody will stand in your way. In fact, they will cheer you on. And I love that about my profession.