Benched's birth song.

[RichardCranium]

<why?>

Because...

this is opposite of what this thread is meant to be

[Tingles]

I got my first programming job because the HR woman had a thing for young 19 year old boys. Her husband wasn't too pleased about it but she rescued me from a career in the civil service or a bank, bless her frilly pantied a*se.

Forget the subject of this thread... I'm more interested in the background to this story!

[newblood]

Because...

Definitely appreciate the story , what I meant was I didn't want to reflect on my personal misery since I have been reflecting enough now..

The IT picture as we do it is false learning. We are told things are done certain way , we learn it then we apply it on the job, then 10 months later all we knew is no longer relevant and we have new tools and methods to learn.

The person in this profession is doomed one as long he remains the resource that needs to relearn constantly.

Changing to other capacity - management , writing whatever that is not demanding constant relearning every 10 months is what I need to do.

[OrangeHopper]

Went to Uni to do chemistry and in the second year attended a 2 hour introduction to FORTRAN. I was hooked and subsequently spent as much time as possible in the computer department.

Scraped a 3rd and entered the job market at the start of the 80's recession. Did 2 years renting cars at Gatwick while learning to code on a ZX81 and then an Amstrad PC.

Finally lucky enough to get into a simulation company and seven years later I went contracting.

[nomadd]

Can every/most/any single professional out here tell the story about how they started with computers. But try to emphasize on the emotional moments - the excitement , the scientists in you , etc , etc.

The goal basically is to try and cheer up all us benched , god forsaken endangered kind that needs a high-dose of pro IT career propaganda.

Worked as a motor mechanic. Covered in 5h1t every day. Saw a Sinclair advert for the ZX80. Couldn't afford one. Started to notice computers in the high street - Laskey's and Maplin. Finally saved up and got a VIC20. Decided that "computers were the future." They were.

Still, those early days are nothing compared to the day I landed my first contract. I actually shouted the house down with YYYYYYEEEEEEESSSSSS!!!!!! My flatmates thought I'd won the football pools. So did I.

I think "How did you feel when you landed you first contract?" would make a good emotional thread.

[MPwannadecentincome]

I was in the first year of 6th form college doing A levels in 1980 - we were introduced to a teleprinter that was remotely connected to some mainframe at a big oil company's research center using BASIC - the programs were saved to punched tape - plus the teacher had a Z80 based computer with a screen running BASIC.

The sense of being able to solve any problem simply by writing some lines of code was thrilling! I can't remember exactly what the programs were for now but I was forever writing them on blank pieces of paper and putting the best ones into the teletype - what fun it was too debug them!

I think the Sinclair ZX80 had come out around that time or soon after, though I could not afford one. I went to WH Smiths to browse through "Sinclair User" and digesting what the possibilities of these things were.

By the time I had saved any money up for anything I bought a ZX Spectrum (the BBC needed more dosh than I had) and started playing with it including typing in long listings from "Sinclair User" which I had subscribed to. I started writing some stuff on my own and showing them off to anyone who cared to listen - but could not be bothered with Z80 Assembler, I did whatever I could in ZX Basic but after a while frustrated with the clunkiness of it all.

Then the interest got taken over with playing all the games - I remember Jet Set Willy was very popular when I was at University, though at Uni as well we had to do some Fortran as part of the course too - that is where I learnt more about operating systems - it was Multics at the time.

Then one summer I found a summer job - a travel agency (actually a "bucket shop") wanted someone to come and write a program on a ZX Spectrum to make it easier to find all the flight deals that they had on various bits of paper.

So I took on the task of analysing all these bits of paper and wrote a program for someone to enter the data and another program where it asked for the destination and listed all the results. It was very slow at searching so I got a friend to give me some Assembler to do the search loop. The whole system turned out to be very effective - I had to use it myself when the boss went on holiday leaving me as the only person left to answer the phones (real testing and quick debugging needed!).

After that I ended up doing my thesis using a modelling program written in Fortran IV, which I had to enhance quite a bit and document what enhancements I had done - this taught me something about good code writing styles - well upto a point given the limitations of Fortran IV!

Like OrangeHopper I scraped a 3rd and I fell into IT full-time more by accident than by design - by the time I graduated there was a recession for science graduates so after 100 job applications I found myself with 20 other graddies in a defence company. As the pace there at the time was quite slow I did a lot of reading (e.g. Yourdon) learning C and VAX Fortran, Poplog and Coral-66 and went on a City and Guilds course for Programming and Systems Analysis, also the company sent us on various courses. The work was interesting and mainly on VAXes though some on Unix too, which all set me up for my career going forward!

BTW I still have all the "Sinclair Users" and the ZX Spectrum with microdrive safely packed in the attic - hoping that by the time everyone else has lost theirs mine will be very valuable