There's a rather nice little thread starting over at Kasia's site which will have a lot of computer professionals getting all misty-eyed and nostalgic. She's talking about 'first computer experiences': a subject dear to every one of us in the trade - or at least to all the nerds and geeks.

Personally, my history reaches back to 1981 or 1982 (as you say, Kasia, "I'm old"!) - I don't recall which year it was, precisely - when I bought a Sinclair ZX-81. This wonder of dodgy technology came with 1Kb of memory, expandable to 16Kb by adding a RAM-pack on the back. Unfortunately, said RAM-pack connected very badly, so the slightest movement could cause everything to crash. The machine came with a very simplified form of BASIC, and I have fond memories of typing in pages and pages of code to run simple games. It was truly amazing what could be done with 16Kb of memory and some smart programming: 3D Monster Maze and a version of the arcade classic Scramble are engraved upon my mind's eye.

After this, I advanced to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and a massive 128Kb of memory! Games and programs came on audio tapes, took 5-15 minutes to load, were in colour and had proper sound. Wow. Again, the machine came with a version of BASIC and, again, I spent hours and hours transcribing code from magazines or struggling with my own simple programs. I think it is probably at this stage, around 1983 (at a guess), that I first really began getting the computer bug (pun intended). The number of hours spent in retreat, tapping on that rubber-keyed marvel would dismay most parents: thankfully, mine were willing to leave me to my obsessions as long as I continued to go out into the three-dimensional world occasionally!

From the Spectrum, I then advanced rapidly through other machines. A BBC Master followed for school-work: the school I attended had just started offering a computer course in my last couple of years there, but it was all based on BBC BASIC and not on anything with PCs. By this time, I was seriously bitten by computers: before I owned the BBC machine, I had actually read the entire BASIC manual (i.e. command reference) from cover to cover... oh, dear. Still, I put in huge numbers of hours on my school projects, spanning two double-sided 5.25 inch disks with the final one, got good marks and realised that this was, most definitely, the subject for me.

On the gaming side, I also had an Atari ST around that time, which was an excellent gaming machine. It was, of course, in direct competition with the Commodore Amiga, which was admittedly slightly better for gaming but less flexible for other stuff. My two best friends also had Atari machines, so we used to spend hours over at each others' houses playing and chatting. Those two guys were like family to me.

University was a simple choice: Computer Science. That's where the programming started, and stopped. After three years of battling with Pascal, LISP, APL, Prolog, C, C++, Assembler and various other languages, I really didn't want to do that any more: purely the programming, not the whole computer thing. Since then, I have done some minor development, but it's all been very much 'macro' stuff - no serious coding to speak of.

After University, I finally got my first PC, which I built myself. I've always built my own PCs (except for the most recent one, where I couldn't be bothered any more and paid a couple of other guys to build it for me!). That's where everything turned serious: gaming obsession, computer obsession... time to get a job in computers!!

Since then, I've been a trainer, a freelancer, on two helpdesks, a sysadmin, a consultant, a contractor, a Siebel admin and have finally ended up where I am: a tech lead (of sorts) and doing a bunch of other stuff. I've never specialised. I've always worked with computers (except when I was a barman for a while). There is nothing more for which I could ask than what I have had (except maybe Winona Ryder).

In answer to your question, Kasia: I, too, am one of the lucky ones. I get paid to do what I love doing. It's rare for me to wake up and not want to go to work: I can learn what I want, pick up new applications, share what I know with colleagues I can consider friends...

...life is grand.