Lately, I’ve seen a lot of “become a software engineer” and “learn to code” posts. Lots of them focus on job security, salary and other stuff.
I thought it’s worth a story of why I became a software engineer.
Story time
When I was in the 3rd grade my mom got me my first computer. It had 1024K of memory.
The night the computer was delivered I remember the guy (his name was Avi too, I remember the dude to this day) sitting in front of the computer typing like crazy, setting up everything, changing disks every time he needed something.
He had such focus, such expertise. This was the first time I encountered such a thing.
It was like watching music composition, he made the computer do what he wants and when he wants. I will never forget that night, ever in my life.
This computer was my first introduction to the amazing world of software, games, writing and creativity outlet.
I spent every minute I had on this computer, often pretending to be sick just so I can spend a few more hours playing.
I remember I used to open a text editor and pretend to type like him. Just typing gibberish, I liked the sound the keyboard makes and feeling like I am an expert with this thing.
First lines of code
I remember this day like it was yesterday, I was about 12 years old and I got a magazine (printed) to my house that showed how you can build an internet website using HTML.
I opened up notepad on my windows 95 and started coding
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<HTML>
<!-- Here's a good place to put a comment. -->
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Structural Example</TITLE>
</HEAD><BODY>
<H1>First Header</H1>
<P>This is a paragraph in the example HTML file. Keep in mind</P>It was ugly, it wasn’t styled but when I browsed using my Internet Explorer to c:\index.html I was enchanted, I was hooked, I created something!
Creativity Outlet
Since that day, the computer has been my creativity outlet.
I love creating things that people use. It can be a button to post a review, and it can be a recommendation system.
Ever since this kid started I wrote millions of lines of code. Lots of it was crappy, buggy, I remember just having one undo step with nodepad to this day, I won’t say I loved every minute but there’s not a single day that I thought about doing something else for a long period of time.
Modern times
To this day, I just love creating things.
It can be a recommendation system and it can be an Arduino based cat door. The language is irrelevant and the framework is irrelevant. Crafting and creating is the most important to me.
I never lost the love for creating things, ever since this 12 year old boy wrote his first lines of HTML code to this day.
If you want to learn to code because you are looking for ways to express yourself and create things. Kudos for you, you are in for an awesome ride.
Thank you!
This is the first time I ever tell this story of what drove me to become a software engineer, I am sure this random computer technician is not aware of the impact he had on my life.
Thank you!
