Working As A Programmer

I really enjoy working as a programmer, I really do. It is what I wanted to do when I graduated from high school, little did I know that it would take over twenty years to finally start working as one.

When I was in high school I found computers and computer programming endlessly fascinating. We did have a programming class available in school. I really don’t remember what kinds of programs we created in the class but there are a few things that I do remember. We stored everything we did on a singe 5 1/4″ floppy disk which had a storage capacity of a whopping 1.2 MB. Also that we worked on Apple IIe computers with green monochrome monitors. Other than that I don’t remember what we did.

At home I had a Commodore Vic-20. Actually I still have it, it is upstairs but has a bad power switch so it won’t turn on. It hooked up to the TV through an A/V switch on the back of the set. I would write little programs in BASIC. I would spend hours working on a program. I would run it over and over until I was satisfied with it. The unfortunate thing is that I didn’t have a storage device, so I would get it to do what I wanted, run it several times, and then turn it off and it would be gone forever. I have no idea how many hours of my work disappeared into nothing.

In late 2010 I discovered that was eligible to attend college using the unused portion of the GI Bill from my early enlistment in the military. Once it was confirmed that I would be able to attend college I had to decide what I wanted to do. I thought about maybe something medical because there would always be job opportunities but in the end I went with programming. So I went back to school at the age of 40 and received an Associates Degree in Computer Information Technology. The same week I presented my final project I accepted a job offer to be a web developer. It was truly a case of right place at the right time.

I now get to go to work everyday and do something that I thoroughly enjoy. Currently I am working for the Nebraska State Legislature and get to work in the State Capitol, pretty cool.