I’ve always wanted to write these memories down. Since this is my first-ever blog post, it feels like the perfect time to share them.
Finding my passion
Some people go through life without knowing what they want or what they should do with their time. I think that’s a difficult place to be, because having a clear passion or a goal makes it much easier to find happiness, I guess.
I started in the world of programming pretty late from my perspective—at 17, more or less. Growing up in a poor family in Paraguay, it was hard to have things like a TV or a CD player. In fact, I only got my first cell phone at 17 as a gift from a guy I met at university. I remember so well when he screamed in my face: “How can you not have a cell phone?” He just pulled out his SIM card and handed the phone to me. It was a Nokia, but I don’t remember the model anymore.
But at what point did I know I wanted to be a software developer?
The first time I saw a computer
It was back in elementary school. When I started 7th grade at about 12 years old, we had a computer class. I was new at that school and didn’t even know that was a thing for our grade.
We walked into what looked like an old room with big communal tables, with a bunch of computers lined up on top. They were those classic, bulky IBM PCs with CRT monitors—maybe 14 or 17 inches—equipped with heavy mechanical keyboards and those old mice with the rubber balls inside.
I sat in my chair while the teacher explained what each part was—the keyboard, the mouse, the monitor, and the tower.
I was quietly sitting and listening, but not really understanding what was going on. In front of me, I just saw a TV. I didn’t know what a computer was at that moment, so I was lost listening to a teacher spitting out words I had never heard before.
Once the professor finished the theoretical part of his class, he asked us to press the power button. I did, and I started hearing weird sounds inside that yellowish box. It was probably the HDD trying to load the operating system.
At that point I didn’t know it, but all the computers in that room were running Linux. Although I didn’t touch another Linux computer for a long time, it ended up being my favorite OS over time.
The magic
Once the OS booted up, the teacher asked us to move the mouse. When I did, and saw the cursor moving on the screen, I was shocked.
Something happened in my head and I started to ask myself: How could that thing move a graphic on that big-ass TV? Is that information going through the cord? How does the TV know I’m moving the mouse?
This might sound really stupid to you, but for someone who barely had access to a radio or a TV (usually by visiting neighbors), this was mind-blowing.
All this made me question a lot of things that we all take for granted. How does the voice of a speaker travel from a station to a radio? How do the images of a TV show go from the studio to the screen? How the hell can a camera capture a picture and have it be printed so perfectly?
At that very moment, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to work with computers! I didn’t know how or what that meant, but that was what I wanted.
A long journey to become what I want
Like I said before, I was in the 7th grade at that time and I still had five grades ahead of me before I could go to university.
I had no idea what a programming language was or how computers really worked. In fact, I could barely access one and I was too broke to pay for a course or buy my own.
I started frequenting universities and public libraries with my friends where we could use a computer and access the internet. My school friends were as broke as me, so we used to walk long distances from school to a university just to use a computer.
I remember we walked (believe it if you want) around 11 kilometers from our school to a university because someone told us it was the first one to have Windows XP. At that time, it was like cutting-edge technology—at least in Paraguay—so we just had to see it. I don’t know what was in my head to do that.
Time passed and I had to wait until I finished school to finally go to university and understand how the hell a computer works. To my surprise, I wouldn’t actually learn a lot there.
The hardware enters my life
I was hungry to learn, so I met a guy who offered me a job (the same one who gave me his cell phone as a gift) where I learned a lot about hardware. My job was to assemble computers. I had to buy parts, make sure they were compatible, and ensure that I didn’t screw up when mounting critical parts like the power supply, which at that time wasn’t as simple as it is today.
We are talking about a time when Pentium III was still popular, although Pentium D was already around and we were close to seeing Intel release the Core 2 processors.
It was a fun time. I learned a lot about how each piece worked and how to install an operating system—Microsoft Windows, at the time.
Vectors, bitmaps and animations
At the university, I was introduced to Basic, FoxPro, Visual Basic, and a little bit of Java. But what really pulled me into programming was ActionScript 3.0.
Despite all the hate Adobe Flash got, I think it was a great ecosystem. Not perfect, but it was the best option if you wanted to do more advanced stuff on the web at the cost of installing a plugin.
I came across Adobe Flash because I needed to put some pennies in my pocket. I started playing with Photoshop and Illustrator to design brochures and marketing campaigns that you had to print and hand out manually in the street.
It was then that I realized how much I liked the visual aspect of the computer world. I spent a significant amount of time learning Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and eventually Adobe Flash to dive into the 3D world.
This last one helped me introduce myself to Object Oriented Programming, strongly typed languages, and the concept of libraries that you can use to build what you want on top.
My first programming job
I joined my first job around 2007 or 2008, but I wasn’t hired as a programmer. I was hired as IT support, where I learned a lot about servers, networking, and everything around IT, including security using movement sensors and CCTV cameras.
The company had an inventory system, and slowly I started to convince my boss that I could help. I started building basic websites for customers and eventually joined a project to port the inventory system from Delphi to C#.
I haven’t disliked an ecosystem so much in my life as the .NET ecosystem. I know things have changed a lot, but at that time it was as painful as working with Java. It was slow, and it was really time-consuming to set up your IDE and work environment. Even more so in a country like Paraguay where the internet was really slow and, for some reason, Microsoft thought that requiring big-ass packages to start programming an app was a good idea.
A long way from selling food
Before I made a living as a software developer, I worked on all sorts of things—IT networking, CCTV, graphic design, mounting towers for FM radios, and even selling food in the street.
I can think of a lot of situations and things that I went through until I became a solid software developer, like how I landed my first remote job, but I don’t want to make this post any longer.
My goal was to dump some memories which, as I get older, start to get more blurry in my head.
I think despite all the sacrifice, I am very fortunate to be where I am.