This is what clinched my career path for me. When I was 12 I and three of my friends would code on our TI-82’s and share that with each other. Being able to get

This is what clinched my career path for me. When I was 12 I and three of my friends would code on our TI-82’s and share that with each other. Being able to get positive feedback from people I liked spurred me to spend even more time at it than I would otherwise have. I wrote apps for the TI-83 and TI-89 in high school (helpers for doing synthetic division of polynomials, a valence shell calculator for chemistry, a Mandelbrot generator, some interactive physics apps for solving common physics word problems), which also temporarily turned me from the nerdy kid to the most popular kid in the class, which was another big step toward cementing my future path. I’m not sure I’d be where I am today if not for all that positive feedback from my peers.