[thelist] how did you learn?

Rob Smith rob.smith at THERMON.com
Tue Jun 29 10:56:52 CDT 2004


I was 14 when I started. I'm 25 now. 

I bought a Macintosh Performa 630 for $1200. It was the last Mac that they
put out that didn't come with a CD-Rom as a standard feature. :-\ So I
coughed up $400 for a 4x external CD-Rom drive and proceeded with...

Books. TONS of books. I kept buying and learning. I still have some of my
books from when I first started for nostalgia purposes. I was too young to
take college courses. In fact when I was old enough to take them, I fought
and fought to test out of them. It was the most excruciating thing to have
to endure; forced to take the class. I was teaching the professors even on
the Masters level. They were promoting frames and cheesy Javascript tricks
of all things! Thank heaven that didn't go for the <blink> tags. Phew! My
manager scared me for a second when he mentioned that to "improve our site."


My language arsenal now contains nearly two dozen languages on most major
platforms and databases. I wanted to experience Oracle during my undergrad,
but it was reserved for the Masters students. Probably because of the
$80,000 price tag at the time.

So how did I learn? It was a childhood passion that grew into an adult
profession. Honestly, I wanted to build and design Roller Coasters
originally. Since I chose a different career path, all I can say is I cannot
wait for Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 to hit the shelves in November! 

Rob


More information about the thelist mailing list