3 My journey as a programmer started early in my life. I became interested in computers after reading about them in the World Book Encyclopedia and hoped to work with them some day. What I hadn't realized was those encyclopedias were rather out of date and only showed the larger, more expensive mainframe and mini computers of the 1960s and not the more modern microcomputers of the 1970s. When I saw that an Apple II was a microcomputer and was designed for the home I began my quest to get a computer (AKA: dropping not-so-subtle hints to my parents that I wanted a computer). I scoured magazines looking for the right computer; from the Commodore VIC-20 and Sinclair ZX-80 to the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III. My parents took me to computer stores and I marveled at the machines that were there (and likely made a few sales-people nervous as I poked and prodded the rather new and 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 got a "lab" of three Commodore PET 4032 machines (with floppy disk drives) and I spent every moment I could with those machines. In high school I took several programming courses, both in BASIC and in Pascal (which was my first exposure to a higher-level language, and the 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 but there were a few that used COBOL, Ada, SNOBOL, and assembly language. I graduated with modest scores and returned home.
5 Throughout my career I've straddled the line between system administration and programming. My first few jobs were all related to maintaining various sorts of computers: desktop PCs, UNIX-based machines, and so forth. It wasn't until folks needed websites and realized I knew how to program that my career slid over into programming. From there I learned Perl, SQL, databases, and HTML. At that time the web was new so we were all learning at the same time. I leveraged my Perl knowledge into several jobs doing web-based programming. Perl is a language that is both simple and complex. Perl and CGI made it incredibly easy to get something displayed to a web page. Where it is complex is the syntax for things like regular expressions, and the tendency for Perl programmers to value code that does multiple things on the same line. There was also a lot of value placed on code that was clever, which lead me to wonder on several occasions if I was clever enough to be a Perl programmer.
7 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 developers 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 enjoy being in a managerial role 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. It 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 metadata and very little code. This is what I meant 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.
9 It was around this time that I started learning Python on my own using Pygame and entered my first Pyweek competition. Pyweek is a week-long competition where folks build a game from scratch in one week's time. It was a challenge but was also one of the most rewarding experiences I've had in programming. I build something that was playable when I didn't know what the hell I was doing. In many ways I was learning to swim by throwing myself into the 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 hadn't thought possible.
11 AS the technical lead position wore on I found myself wanting to do something else. I managed to get a position with Sourceforge as a member of the Systems Operations Group. Sourceforge was an amazing experience for me. I had long wanted to work for an Open Source company, and few companies were more well-regarded than Sourceforge and Slashdot 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 horrible error? It didn't help that I was friends with and had gone to school with some of the people who worked at Sourceforge / Slashdot. Was this going to be an elaborate prank, or was I getting in because they knew me? All of these thoughts ran through my head as I started work. 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.
13 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.
15 Later on I got a position doing more Python full-time. I created a lot of interesting projects there and kept on learning more about Python. It helped me to recuperate and strengthen my skills. The folks there were very supportive. There were times where it got stressful but overall it was a positive experience.
17 Sadly I was also laid off from that position (money sucks, y'know?).
19 I started my job search in earnest and went to a bunch of interviews. While everyone 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 seemed like they were testing if I got stressed easily rather than my coding skills. 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. Promising leads turned into rejection letters, 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 beginning 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 fresh faces who hadn't made the mistakes from my career.
21 I registered themediocreprogrammer.com during this period. If I was going to be a fuck-up then I might as well own it.
23 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 a programming conference every year (PyOhio). 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.
25 I'm a collection of all of these experiences. They all make me who I am. Sometimes I wonder if I could have done some of these things different, but that's a futile exercise. The best I can hope to do is learn from them and move on. Each day I work to improve and strengthen myself. Each day I make new mistakes, but that's part of the learning process.
projects / themediocreprogrammer.git / blob