Ok,ok,ok... Foreman Bob/Steve Horn called me out on not have posted a meme on my personal coding history. <meme>
How old were you when you first started programming?
I'm not sure if it was 3rd or 4th grade that I started coding in BASIC on an Apple IIe for about 3 months. Much of it was minor tweaks to "busy-work" type applications.
I pretty much gave up on coding for quite a while. Games were much more interesting (NES was recently released and I <3 8-bit graphics). During my sophmore year in high school (1995), I caught wind of this "series of tubes" and picked up HTML for a class project. Designing the school's webpage... and using the much loved nested tables and shim images.
I continued web development through college even though I changed majors out of the CS department becuase it was all console UNIX C/C++. The IT degree, yes that's INDUSTRIAL Technology had the VBA and ASP courses. As an added bonus, I got to cut and melt things.
What was your first language?
I really don't want to say BASIC as it was mostly copy from book and tweak parameters. So, I'll go with the safe bet and say HTML.
What languages have you used since youstarted programming?
BASIC, HTML, JavaScript, PASCAL, C, C++, VB/VBA/VBScript, PL/SQL, T-SQL, WiseScript, InstallScript, VB.Net, C#, WinBatch, AJAX. Also, a bit of G-Code and whatever Rockwell Automation PLC's use.
What was your first professional programming gig?
That would be working at Ohio University to earn beer money. I had moved up from help desk to NT administration. This required writing batch files, VBScripts to automate system setup and configuration. Somehow, it also involved creating the department websites.
If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?
Actually, I would have started programming earlier. I would have hopped into programming without the time suck of Infrastructure Operations until I "paid my dues".
If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
Be a jack of all trades and a master of (at least) one. You'll need to have a little bit of knowledge in many subjects to be adaptable but find a niche and be the subject matter expert in that area.
What's the most fun you've ever had ... programming?
Somehow, its the projects that are the most annoying at the time that are the most fun in retrospect. But I'd probably have to go with tweaking out TFS with ASMX subscriptions to trigger automated builds, customizations, and deployments. Spinning up a managed instance of MSBuild engine when everyone else is running powershell makes me giddy.
Next up
Greg Bahrey
Arnulfo Wing
Dan Shultz
Alexey Govorine
</meme>
