On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 8:14 AM, G Money <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I spun this off into a new thread because it got me thinking........why > did > everyone here get into programming? Was it by choice? Did it just happen > that way? Did you major in CS in college? Was it to make money? > I got a Commodore Pet Series 2001 in 1977. I was 5, my dad bought it. I wrote my first programs on it.
10 PRINT "GIRLS ARE DUMB" 20 GOTO 10 RUN I enjoyed BBSes and programming on my C64 and Amiga in the 80s, got my first exposure to unix in the 80s as well (see www.arbornet.org). But for some reason, it never occurred to me to major in computer science. I had 3 years of graphic arts in high school - Graphic Arts 1, Graphics Arts 2, and Vocational Graphic Arts. I liked it. I was probably the only kid in those classes with a decent GPA and also taking AP classes. At any rate, I did go off to college to get a degree in Printing Management, but I also took some programming courses - not enough for a minor but I took "Computer Programming I" and "Computer Programming II" (ie, PASCAL and FORTRAN, I think). After I graduated college I started working for a book printer as a cost estimator, and at the same time starting doing some real basic HTML development ... built myself a personal home page, and a few "fan sites" for local bands I liked. In '96, the company I worked for put me on a "reengineering team" to help re-engineer some of our processes around estimating. I was also a bit of an Excel whiz and had built some fairly complex spreadsheets that used macros, VBA, etc... so BookCrafters sent me to a couple of Visual Basic classes and started me down the route of becoming a programmer. I was to develop a new estimating system for them - the old one was written in Wang Basic, and ran on our PCs (in DOS mode) in a Wang interpreter. Anyway, new ownership came along and it became clear that we weren't going to be doing much programming and technically I was still an Estimator. So I left BookCrafters for a job in QA at ArborText and that was my first "job in computers". 6 months or so later I quit that job and became a freelance web developer but after about 6 months of making almost no money, I had to get a real job, and my wife and I moved to North Carolina where I got my first web developer job doing Coldfusion programming in 1998. In hindsight, I wish I *HAD* majored in CS in college because I would've come out of college in 1995 with a CS degree, and ready to dive into the dot com boom. I might've ended up with a dot com and sold my shares for millions of dollars. Ah well. Rick ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;192386516;25150098;k Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:259469 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
