How I got started with computers and software

(image courtesy of bing chat running DALL-E 3)

Early

I suppose my earliest introduction to computer hardware and software was through computer games. One of my earliest memories is that of being ab-so-lutely glued to the screen of an iMac G3 (released 1998) which belonged to my school’s after school day care program. Anyone remember these bad boys? 

Back then it felt like the future to be using one of these compared to my parent’s ancient massive white-and-yellow home desktop tower PC that rivaled the size of a refrigerator and probably made more noise than one when you turned it on.

The first game I can remember playing and being absolutely captivated by was Pangea software’s “Bugdom” (release 1999)

Did I spend 20 minutes googling “old bug game”? Absolutely. Do I regret rediscovering a core childhood memory? Absolutely not. Did I download the game to play it again after ~23 years and after finishing this blog post? Definitely.

Middle

In middle and high school my friends and I were avid gamers. It wasn’t until later on in high school that some of my friends started to experiment with assembling gaming PCs from various parts they had slowly begun sourcing. Me, not wanting to be left out, began to read and watch all the typical content on PC gaming and hardware and building PCs.

After hearing about me talking about it for what felt like years, I think my mom realized that this wasn’t just another one of my phases with hobbies and helped me acquire the needed parts to put together my very own gaming PC. Thanks mom. and also, thanks Paul over at Newegg for letting me watch your how-to video about a thousand times before I felt confident enough in what I was about to do

The video has been lost to time (curse you YouTube hiding old videos!) but the gist of it was something like this:

It was around this time I had started to help my other friends put together their machines as well. Here is the quintessential blurry image of the first PC I put together on my parent’s kitchen table 12-13 years ago.

Now

Once I had my own PC that I knew inside and out, my interests had grown from gaming, to hardware, and now began to branch out into other fields like 3D modeling, digital art, and eventually programming.

I would start small, watching quick tutorial videos on YouTube for programming. Once I got to college I would dabble as an Art major before switching to Computer Science. I took a few basics like C++ and Java. Ultimately I became intimidated by the math requirements needed for a CS major and switched to business for my undergraduate.

But even as a business undergraduate I would spend my free time taking courses for Unity and C# and making fun little physics based phone apps.

After graduating with my undergrad in business I worked in retail management for about a year and a half. Out of the blue one day I received a message from a recruiter at a tech company for a non development role working with their customers in a somewhat quasi technical non-technical role.

I am now a team leader at that software development company in a customer facing role. My team sets up new customers onto the software and receives daily support tickets from clients for the software. We regularly work with development to address bugs or document and mock up new features the customers ask for.

My new job working in software is what inspired me to apply to Oregon State’s Post Bacc. Computer Science program – and I am now back in the Computer Science major with a vengeance!

Closing

Whether its art or pc components or software, I think that I truly feel driven to just build things. My vision for my time after this program at Oregon State is to do just that. Build cool stuff.