A long time ago The first time I got into programming was in high school and they have just thrown out the old typewriters back then and replaced them with IBM PC XT. My school had also set up the computer laboratory air-conditioned. But it was rather too hot because there are about 15 IBM PCs with lots of students in one room.
They taught us Turbo Pascal. I quickly fell in love and thought this is the only thing that I’m going to have good grades with. I had overall poor grades back then. But the computer subject I easily top the class with. There were only two things I was I was good with back then – playing the bass guitar with my band (we covered Pearl Jam) and programming and I had non-programming-kind of friends too.
Nobody knows besides writing on Wordstar how or what computers are for back then much less what is programming. So it’s quite weird to be good at something useless.
Anyway graduation time, I was hoping to get the Best in Computer award but instead, they gave it to someone who is already earning high honors and is also on the Best Section class.
I was disappointed back then and even now I just learned on Facebook that that person didn’t even pursue programming instead became a successful doctor.
College time I took Computer Science and we had Visual Fox Pro and then Visual Basic. Windows 95 was amazing. My parents bought me a windows pc for college. but I only got addicted to playing video games like warcraft 2. The games are too expensive even pirated ones, and I didn’t have a lot of money.
Because I was so confident in programming and needed money, I approached a local computer shop and told the owner I can make computer programs for him.
Perhaps I was too confident, the computer inventory systems I made were buggy and the reports were very inaccurate. I realized that it’s too hard for me and became lazy and eventually we had to part ways.
Then after I graduated college I had to find a real software company so I can learn from them. I took a job as a junior Powerbuilder developer with a salary so low it can only support meals and commute expenses. I remember having to order myself one or two sausage mcmuffins at Mcdonald’s would take my entire week’s budget. I had to ask the office canteen manager to defer paying for my meals until salary time.
So after a while, I have had enough and I threaten them that I’ll resign or give me a raise. They gave me one but it was not the one I’m asking – so I left. At this point I think it was a poor decision, I was young and stupid.
After a while, I joined two more companies and two independent software contracts locally from there. Then time passed and the internet took off. I eventually learned about Upwork and got regular jobs in the UK, Japan, Australia, and the USA. The USA has the best employers – they pay much more.
I’ve then tried to make apps for myself and joined hackathons.
I realized investors only like winners (not ideas or apps.) i.e They want people good at raising money. I realized that I am very poor in that regard talent-wise. The irony is that the people who are good at raising money are the kind of folks who don’t need it.
Anyway, thanks for reading I worked hard for the past few months. Now that the project is coming closer to shipping. It was quite refreshing to write my thoughts again.