I started being interested in coding when I was 7 (in 1990). Our family was quite poor, and no way we could afford even 286DX, and 386DX was well out of our rea

I started being interested in coding when I was 7 (in 1990). Our family was quite poor, and no way we could afford even 286DX, and 386DX was well out of our reach. Somehow my father found a half-broken Electronika BK-0011M, an old USSR computer that ran a stripped-down version of BASIC. It didn't have a memory chip, and we couldn't find any in our small and remote Siberian town. No tape either. And the power supply was faulty, so every 3-4 hours it would reboot, leaving me with a clean slate. We found some "books" that were badly translated BASIC manuals retyped on a typing machine. I was mostly coding various graphical and physical simulations then, drawing procedural images and such. Because of reboots, I had to write it in parallel on the computer and a sheet of paper, so I could type it again if power cycled before I could run and briefly enjoy it. At 11, I was skilled enough to land a first "job" for my mom's research institute: analyzing and visualizing some agricultural data. It paid enough to get a 2nd hand 80486, and my "career" went upwards from there. This whole experience taught me a valuable lesson: ignore excuses, stop complaining, make do with what you have, and move forward. These days my biggest gripe is probably the state of the JavaScript world. I'm mostly a Python person, but having to deal with JS leaves me frustrated more often than not: new frameworks, tools crop up every year, old tools stop working, breaking changes are introduced at such pace that someone not fully dedicated to frontend has a hard time keeping up. If any JS framework had the same stability, level of documentation, and clear roadmap as Django, the frontend world would be a much better place. I think the most valuable skill for a "real world" programmer is the ability to find and read the documentation. Also, curiosity to do that even without an immediate need. Read it like sci-fi. The more you read, the more you have the right mindset, and those "building blocks" that would come later when you're thinking about implementation.