Programming

I first got into programming as a kid, when my dad gave me his old DOS PC and a reference manual for QBASIC. I taught myself the language by studying example programs and looking up commands in the manual. I wasn't very good at it (I'm not sure I ever figured out how write a function lol), but I loved it and spent hundreds of hours making little "choose your own adventure" style games.

When I was a bit older, I got into Minecraft and wanted to create my own mods. I taught myself Java and made a few simple tweaks with Modloader. I didn't like Java, but I liked seeing the results of my work in a 3D world so I stuck with it. Most of my friends also played Minecraft so we started a private server running our favorite mods. We quickly found that it was hard to keep modded clients in sync, so I pivoted to Bukkit plugins. I maintained those plugins for years and even published some of them, which introduced me to the concept of OSS. I kept with that all the way into college, when my old friend group collapsed and I finally shut down the server.

Here, I actually pivoted away from programming and studied computer security. I even swapped the software development branch of my major for a cyber security focus instead. I only swung back to programming at the very last minute because I got a software internship and really enjoyed the work. I still graduated with a cyber security focus, but now I'm a professional software developer 🤷‍♀️