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My journey
My journey as a programmer started when I was in elementary school. I became interested in computers after reading about them in the World Book Encyclopedia and hoped to work with them some day. What I didn't realize was that those encyclopedias were out-of-date and only showed the larger, more expensive mainframe and mini-computers of the 1960s and not the more modern microcomputers that were introduced in the late 1970s. When I realized that an Apple ][ was a microcomputer and that it was designed for the home market I began my quest to get a computer of my own (AKA: I started dropping not-so-subtle hints to my parents that I wanted a computer). I scoured magazines like Popular Computing and Byte Magazine looking for the right computer; from the Commodore VIC-20 and Sinclair ZX-80 to the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III (Even the Rockwell AIM-65 or Heathkit H89 would have worked. I wasn't picky back then.) My dad took me to computer stores and I marveled at the variety of machines that were there (and likely made a few sales-people nervous as I poked and prodded the new and rather expensive machines). Finally my dad picked up an Atari 400 computer with tape drive, and I began learning BASIC programming in earnest. Around the same time my school opened a "computer lab" with three Commodore PET 4032 machines (complete with floppy disk drives), and I found myself spending every moment I could with those machines. In high school I took two programming courses, one in BASIC and the other in Pascal (which was my first exposure to procedural languages, and the basic concepts of computer science). In college I majored in Computer Science with a Bachelor of Science and did my best to keep up with all of the things that they tried to teach me. Unfortunately, I wasn't a great student (especially in mathematics). I struggled with and later dropped my compilers class, and felt like I was falling behind where other students succeeded. Most of our classes used Pascal, which I was becoming more familiar with, but there were a few classes that used COBOL, Ada, SNOBOL, C, and assembly language. I graduated with modest scores and returned home.
Throughout my career I've straddled the divide between system administration and programming. Linux was similar to the SunOS machines that I admired in college, so I transitioned to using that as my primary OS around 1995. My first jobs tasked me with maintaining various sorts of computers: desktop PCs, UNIX-based machines, and backing up the occasional VAX machine. It wasn't until one of my positions needed a website that I added more programming to my resume. Programming websites in the 1990s was where I really started to learn and understand Perl, SQL, relational databases, and HTML. The web was so new in the 1990s that all of the folks on our projects were learning at the same time. I leveraged my Perl knowledge into several other jobs and projects doing web-based programming. Perl in the 1990s was a language where the basics were simple to learn but the language could handle really complex ideas and data structures. Perl and CGI made it easy to get something onto a web page that had some interactivity. Where Perl becomes complex is the syntax for things like regular expressions, and the tendency for Perl programmers to value code that does multiple actions on the same line. The Perl community also values code that is clever, which lead me to wonder on several occasions if I was clever enough to be a Perl programmer.
One of the companies I worked at decided to migrate a Perl system over to a Java-based environment. They looked at the skills of the existing development team and decided they needed to outsource the project to another company. This was a common trend in the early 2000s for reasons that are outside of the scope of this book. This gave me my first taste as a team leader. I know a lot of programmers migrate over into managerial roles but at the time I didn't feel I had fully explored my programming potential. I sat down on several occasions and tried to learn Java but it never clicked for me. Java web development always felt more cumbersome than Perl CGI scripts that I created. It also didn't help that we were shipping .war files into a Tomcat system, which seemed like they were comprised of a lot of configuration metadata and very little code. This is what I was referring to when I spoke about being OK with giving up on learning something --- sometimes what we try to learn is more of a chore. Having something that is a chore isn't going to provide a good learning experience.
It was around this time that I began learning Python on my own using Pygame. I took the plunge by entering my first Pyweek competition. Pyweek is a week-long competition where folks build an entire game from scratch in one week. It was a challenge, but was also one of the most rewarding experiences I've had in programming. I build a game called "Busy Busy Bugs" that was playable during a time when I really didn't know what I was doing. In many ways I was learning to swim by throwing myself into the proverbial deep end. I wasn't in any danger, but the desire to get something done at the end of a week drove me in ways I didn't think was possible.
As the technical lead position continued I found myself wanting to do something else. I interviewed at several places and was hired at Sourceforge as a member of the Systems Operations Group. Sourceforge was an amazing experience for me. I dreamed of working for an Open Source company, and few Open Source companies were as well-regarded as Sourceforge and Slashdot were in the Open Source community, but my insecurities and "impostor syndrome" kicked in. Would I be able to cut it? Would they hire me only to realize they'd made a mistake and I wasn't as good as I claimed to be? I was friends with and had gone to school with several of the people who worked at Sourceforge / Slashdot, so I wondered about their motivations for hiring me. Was my getting hired an elaborate prank, or was I hired because several folks in the company knew me? All of these thoughts ran through my head while I worked there. It didn't help that my position was primarily system administration at a level that I was inexperienced at. There was also a programming component to the position, but I constantly felt like I was in way over my head. I lived in constant fear that I was going to be found out and that the job that I wanted would no longer be available to me. Granted I learned a lot and had very supportive and kind management at Sourceforge but I lived in dread whenever my manager would check in on me because I feared that the conversation would only highlight that I wasn't really supposed to be there.
I'd love to say that it had a happy ending and that my fears were unfounded, but sadly I was let go from that position due to budgetary constraints. I'm grateful for the opportunities I had there, the friends I made, and the experiences I had but I'd be lying if the layoff didn't come with a mixture of sadness and relief. Sadness that I might never have a cool job like that again, and relief that I could put away those impostor syndrome feelings for the time being. In many ways I grew from the experience of working at Sourceforge and learned a lot about myself and my capabilities while working there, but it was also the position where I felt my impostor syndrome at its fullest.
Later on I was hired for a full-time position doing Python programming. This position allowed me to strengthen my craft as a Python developer. I created many interesting projects there and kept learning more about Python. It helped me to recuperate and broaden my skills. The folks at this position were very supportive and kind. There were times where it got stressful (all jobs seem have stress), but overall it was a positive experience.
Sadly I was also laid off from that position (money sucks, y'know?).
I started my job search in earnest and went to a bunch of interviews. While everyone in the interviews seemed impressed with my skills and my career I fell into one of two categories: either I wasn't a good fit for the position, or I didn't have enough skills in areas they were looking for. I found myself taking timed-coding-tests that felt like they were testing whether I got stressed easily rather than any coding skills I might have. I sat in coding sessions with shadowy figures that barked out commands and requirements while I tried my best to follow them. I did math puzzles and logic problems (which is horrifying if you're not good at either math or logic problems). Promising leads turned into rejection letters (assuming I heard back at all), and desperation set in as I faced the real prospect that I would have to give up programming if I wanted to make a living. Visions of heading back to the beginnings of my career filled me with dread. It seemed like nobody wanted to take a chance on me anymore, and I couldn't compete with so many new programmers who hadn't made the mistakes that I had in my career.
I registered themediocreprogrammer.com during this period. If I was going to be a fuck-up then I might as well own it.
Fortunately, I've had a community of friends and fellow programmers to help support me. My current position is contracting with one of these friends to help him with programming tasks. That position came about from showing up to PyOhio (a programming conference) every year. Throughout my struggles I've been fortunate to have a community there to help me. This is why I think communities are so great --- they give us a network of folks that we might not otherwise have, and help us through our triumphs and our struggles.
I'm a collection of all of these experiences. They all make me who I am. Sometimes I wonder if I should have taken a different path or done something different, but that's a futile exercise. The best I can do with these experiences is learn from them and move on. Each day I work to improve and better myself. Each day I make new mistakes, but that's all part of the learning process.
My journey continues.