I started learning programming when I was in grade school. I first wrote a Pong clone in QBASIC. Thinking I had game development nailed I then set out to build

I started learning programming when I was in grade school. I first wrote a Pong clone in QBASIC. Thinking I had game development nailed I then set out to build a video game like Doom. That was a failure obviously but I learned a lot. Next I got interested in Linux and started writing a large assortment of tiny little Unix utilities that were of no use to anyone but me. But they were of use to me and I thought they were important. I put one or two on Freshmeat. If I had been stuck in a class and told to write the exact same little Unix utility as 30 other people, that it must do x y and z and must not do anything else, that it would be graded and then discarded it would have crushed my soul. And yeah I did poorly in school in general.