The short version:
- A childhood exposure to
10 PRINT HI20 GOTO 10 - I entered college in 1991, and on my second night there, spent a long evening with BITNET SEND and giggly missives to a new friend on the other sideof the room
The long version?
I made webpages to view in lynx. I made web pages to view in NCSA Mosaic. I got very excited by tables and the blink tag, and I did all of this without owning a computer of my own.
I graduated with a very fine Bachelor of Arts degree in English.
From there, I entered into a variety of IT jobs with various titles. Many of them just ended up with “just do this thing and make it work.” Almost all of them involved end users.
And in the middle the Internet boomed, and from there I could retreive the software to make a server go and find the documentation and help to make it go right.
I never learned to be afraid of messing up, even though I messed up a lot.
I accidentally acquired the skills suitable for many computery jobs: the language to ask questions, taxonomies of technologies, accelerating my learning of a new thing by relating it to an old thing, and a willingness to make cockamamie things work. A recognition of where processes could be could be improved by recognizing and implementing patterns. My titles were: trainer, consultant, implementation specialist, instructional designer, system administrator, tech support, technical writer, BI analyst, associate.
I floated into a gig that emphasized wanting extensive OO experience and a computer science degree. Neither of which I remotely had. I was hired on strong SQL experience, web familiarity, a smattering of javascript, and a strong endorsement.
As it turns out, by the time they met me, I was ready for a dev ops position — I’d touched most of the elements anyway.