I did a degree in Computer Science, which I didn't _get_ at all, and I hated every minute of it. I worked in sales and teaching for a few years before accepting

I did a degree in Computer Science, which I didn't _get_ at all, and I hated every minute of it. I worked in sales and teaching for a few years before accepting an offer to program full-time. I came into the field with fresh eyes, and a desire to excel. There I learned the programming not taught at my "Java school" such as: emacs/vim, bash, code control, web programming, perl, and php. I read Steve Yeggy. From there I went to a job highly focused on quality first, where I was exposed to good (or at least better) OO, TDD, Uncle Bob, and Fowler. Now, I am learning to burn off all the cruft of programming that is not directly related to quickly shipping high quality code. If I could go back: I would spend more time programming _anything_. At this point, the only thing that has slowed me is a lack of practice at the craft.