I really didn’t want to be - I went to grad school for math, and generally disliked the programming I was familiar with (basic C, intermediate Scheme, and a lot

I really didn’t want to be - I went to grad school for math, and generally disliked the programming I was familiar with (basic C, intermediate Scheme, and a lot of MATLAB). I had written some small games in C and TI-BASIC in middle school, and enjoyed writing algorithms in Scheme, but otherwise found programming tedious and frustrating. I never did it for fun. And as a practical matter I was too ivory-tower to get even a MATLAB job (no Simulink / etc). So although I could program I never considered myself a “coder.” Fast forward to an analyst gig at a startup that didn’t work out due to an unscrupulous CEO: I ended up homeless and took an entry level C# job. So “economic desperation in 2016” was, unfortunately, the moment. But it turns out programming in C# is a lot less frustrating than MATLAB! There was a whole world in “practical” computer science that I was completely unaware of. Later I discovered dependent types and theorem provers, which I suppose means I’ve come full circle. In 2021 I am taking time off to work on a serious Idris project :)