Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a devoted tech enthusiast. At five, I was already tinkering with old radios, and when my dad brought home our first computer, he couldn’t wait to tell us about the Internet, which he’d heard about from a work friend. I immediately took to programming, finding a language called QBasic on that i386 PC after Dad upgraded to a “Pentium.” A book from the public library showed me how to navigate this version of Basic that shipped with Windows 3.1. The moment I realized I could make a computer follow my commands through code, I was hooked.
Eventually, I dove into Linux, C, C++, and even Assembly. But life has its own rhythm. At 16, my focus shifted toward hanging out with friends and meeting new people, putting programming on hold for a while. When I joined the Air Force, I had hoped to pursue computers but was assigned as an aircraft mechanic instead. It wasn’t all bad — I was stationed overseas, met some incredible people, and enjoyed life.
Still, my passion beckoned. Using the Air Force’s tuition benefits, I pursued a Computer Studies degree. It gave me the flexibility to explore various courses, including one on Perl, which I quickly fell in love with. The language was both messy and elegant, the perfect tool for a hacker. Along the way, I also dabbled in web development, Java (which was trending at the time), databases, and .NET.
