I got my first "real" computer at age 7...an IBM XT. I took it apart the next day just to see how it worked. I spent hours on end on the DOS command line or w

I got my first "real" computer at age 7...an IBM XT. I took it apart the next day just to see how it worked. I spent hours on end on the DOS command line or writing silly programs in BASIC. Upgraded every few years, getting new computers with new features. In 1990, I got a system with a Sound Blaster, so I got into MIDI recording. In 1992 I got a CD-ROM and got into hacking Sierra games. In 1995 I got AOL and got obsessed with chatrooms and warez. In 1998 I started college and was introduced to high speed internet. That was the real defining moment for me. Being able to download any song, movie, or piece of software at will made the internet the most amazing thing in the world. And since the way to access it was through websites, I downloaded Photoshop and Dreamweaver and learned web design. Since the best sites were interactive, I needed to learn web programming as well, so I walked to the campus bookstore and bought Learning Perl by Larry Wall. In December 1999 I built my first website, Ziggles.com, a comparison shopping site written in Perl that spidered the top 20 online bookstores and displayed the results with affiliate links. I made about $1000 a month in revenue (nearly all profit since I was already living on ramen at the time) and even got job offers from Silicon Valley startups. In another year or two I probably could have gotten hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital, but the bubble burst and reality set in. Those all night coding marathons or days spent reading Advanced SQL techniques when I should have been reading Shakespeare (English major) have paid off, since I make a better living as a developer than I could working in an English factory.