Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?

I became a programmer because Travelocity couldn't hire competent front-end developers. I was hired on October 2007 as a designer. They had plenty of designers. After 3 months of doing very little work I was reassigned to a developer position and told to figure it out. I figured it out because I wanted to remain employed so that I could continue to pay my rent and feed my children.

In hindsight this experience has proven problematic. Many people who perform front-end development never seem to figure it out. They are dependent upon a collection of tools to do large portions of their job for them. This is incredibly frustrating because it exposes a very extreme and immediate sense of dependency that quickly leads to insecurity, which is a polite way of saying hand-holding possibly infantile. That is a wildly different perspective that often results in friction and sometimes hostility.

I was a church youth worker in the mid 90s when my friend gave me his Dad's old 386 computer which started my interest in computing. I went on to buy a second hand 486 for £200 which was a big investment for my wife and I at the time.

My curious nature resulted in me upgrading my 486. I lost a night of my life trying to add a cdrom when I didn't know what jumpers were :-)

I left youth work and got a job in a local school as the photocopy guy. I grew in confidence and was going out at night and fixing people's computers to support my wife and son and daughter.

I was also studying part-time. I had just enough qualifications to become the school IT Technician when the opportunity arose. I went on to be the school Network Manager and grew the school network from 50 to 500 computers.

I left the public sector and joined a Saas company. I eventually became their infrastructure lead. By this stage I was managing a team running a Xenserver infrastructure spread throughout several data centres in the UK.

I created a website called https://freeperiod.co.uk when I worked in the school. A room booking system for schools. I left my job at the beginning of this year and was taken on to an accelerator program. So Freeperiod has become a company and I am also doing consultancy work.

Underpinning all this is a love for Linux. Faith is also important to me and I believe God has given me the desires of my heart throughout my career. Where there has been an interest I have moved into that field. I also understand now that employers need good workers. If you have a good work ethic you will enjoy your work and may do well.

The first programmable device I had was a Texas TI-55 calculator. "Programmable" is a stretch, but it was "automatable". It had no conditional branching and the only unconditional jump it could make was for step 0 of the program. Still, I managed to make it solve 2nd degree equations within its 50 or so available steps. It took me a while to do it because the number of steps available was insufficient and I had to invert a sign and jump to 0 in order to give the second result. This was early 80's.

From then, I was hooked. I briefly had a Sinclair ZX-81 clone (all Brazilian computers were clones back then), and quickly moved to a very nice Apple II+ clone with a "programmable" keyboard.

I had some contact with mainframes - an IBM 4341 - and some Unix in college, but it wasn't until 2004 or so that I decided to move my main desktop to Linux. Linux has been my daily driver since then (even though my corporate-issue computers have been Macs for quite some time).

Got my first PC in ~2001 Mainly used for playing games.

First contact to programming was through the computer course at school.

Decided that I want to pursue a degree in computer science and studied the same at university.

After getting the bachelors degree I applied for jobs and am happily employed now since 5 years.

So all in all the most boring 'foot in the door' story you could imagine.

I'm 41, and have been using it for over 2 decades.

It's always been a hobby. I work in a non-tech field, I have just liked it better than alternatives, and like the tinkering bit.

It started about 1993, as a freshman at Bronx Science. The school's internet terminals ran AIX (IBM X Stations with these nice big 21" CRTs). Senior year, a friend gave me a CD from Walnut Creek. That was Slackware. Started playing with it, and liked it. I was using a custom built 486 I bought at a computer show. However, things were far from easy as documentation back then was hard to find.

From there, first year of college (1998), I moved to Red Hat (at 5.1) and with the help of a guy on IRC got the Sound Blaster drivers compiled, X running, and everything else I needed. The college computers at the time ran VAX (not so Unix-y) and Digital's OS/F, so again I felt right at home with a Unix-like OS.

From there it was a wrap. Haven't touched any proprietary system since. In between there's been periods of using BSD, and a lot of "distro hopping."

Twenty three years later, I'm almost back where I started - Fedora. Still a hobbyist, still tinkering.

I had an old iMac G3 when I was a kid, and I was searching for a file or an app in Finder (I don't remember which), and I accidentally double clicked on an applescript file because it froze for a few seconds. The rest is history.

Step Dad got a 286 in 1989. Spent lots of time on that DOS machine.

Linux in University and then again on/off during my last 20 years in my industry. Though I wonk at a windows place now I try not to think about it too much. The rest of the place and how awesome it is more than makes up for a poopy OS.

Linux at home finally a year and a half ago when my disposable income was up to the challenge of buying a state of the art machine. Wish I had done it earlier. It's a blast.

I came back home from a 2-week summer camp, at 13 years old, to an IBM PCjr. Was told "We spent a lot of money on this setup, it better not be collecting dust in a few months".

From there I learned DOS, Basic, general "administration". Got a job in late high school at the small company where my Mom worked, helping out with various office tasks (filing, running the postage meter, counting inventory). They had a few PCs, and a "main" computer system (some sort of Data General "mini" I believe). They had a PC consultant that would come in for various tasks, for $350 an hour. They quickly found out they could get the same work from me for $3.50 an hour.

Eventually, the company that supplied their central computer (with a bunch of ASCII terminals hooked up) migrated over to a Unix system (AIX on an IBM RT), I saw that the interface was somewhat similar to DOS but different, and went to town. Learned the vendor's app export functions, started producing custom reports using grep/sed/join/awk in shell scripts, became a "local hero", realized I have a hero complex, so I kept pursuing tasks that would help feed my ego -- further learned C programming, and the rest is history.

Today I'm a Linux systems/network engineer that does a lot of programming on the job (now they call it devops), and also filling in as a pinch hitter for some of the development teams whenever they need someone that knows system level programming and C. Also put out a few full-stack apps using node.js on the back end with plain html5/javascript on the front end (not really into modern frameworks, that is a hole I need to fill in).

It's actually embarrassing. I used to be a full on Win/Mac user in various phases.

I had a coworker who was a contributor and we'd have healthy debates (promise!) about our choice of OS. I decided I'd one-up him, by learning all the finer points about the 3rd remaining OS well, I'd be able to render him speechless! So I installed Linux on a computer and started using it, settings up my dev environment, applications etc. It didn't take long for me to forgot about the original reason for doing it. I only remembered years later and I didn't forget to thank him sincerely for sending me down this path.

I never thought about OSS, freedom, etc, mainly because a premise of being in those closed ecosystems is to be brand loyal. But now it's become very important to me.

QBASIC on windows 98 at school

my first linux distro was http://puppylinux.com/ which i ran on a intel celeron based PC that one of my uncles brought home from some sort of liquidation sale

The first computers I used to program were probably BBC Micros .. which most schools in the UK had in the late 80s.

Friend's had ZX spectrums, Amstrad CPCs, Commodore 64s .. but my family didn't have the cash to buy any of these.

My Dad did have access to an Amstrad PCW, which was basically a word processor with green screen CRT built in. He'd bring it home for school holidays, and I was fascinated by it.

I'd borrow books from the library that aimed to teach kids how to program. This was the late 80s, and the books were written a while before and referenced earlier computers which weren't so common at the time .. TRS-80s .. VIC-20s.

The books had program code that you could type in to create simple games and demos. I'd spend hours typing in the code, only to learn the version of basic used wasn't compatible with the green screen word-processor my dad brought home.

As an introverted kid, I found the possibilities provided by a computer incredibly exciting and exotic.

Once I'd got the bug, I'd spend pocket money on computer magazines for years. The first time I encountered Linux was in the 90s, when I bought a magazine with a CD-ROM containing a slackware distribution. After installing it, there wasn't much I could do with it .. and I didn't really understand it's importance at the time.

I eventually saved up for a 486DX2 PC which cost me a small fortune at the time .. about £1600.

I switched to Linux full-time in about 2005.

My dad bought us a commodore64 at a market. He did not get the tape drive, so it could not save any programmes. It came with a manual that demonstrated how to code in basic. I recall spending hours typing out code to get a ball bouncing across the screen. From there I convinced my dad to get us a computer. Never look d back since then! Funnily enough I got into Linux by picking up floppy disks with Slackware at a market as well!

Being from a so-called "developing" country my contact with computers was highly limited. Like, I used one for the first time when I was 11-12 years old and had the very first one until I was 17, and it was an Acer Note Light that had Windows 95 - but we were in 2005.

At my school, which was actually a "social project" of a school for rich people, they lent us the computers they no longer used for us to learn how a computer worked - at that time they were old b&w Macs and some years after Win95 pcs (they had the then-new iMacs but lent us only for one class; I recall the "wow" factor was so much I even thought the round mouse was cool).

After school I went to try to study electronic engineering but was a total failure, I ended at graphic design that is what I do for a living now. But at that time on a little show the cool kids were toying with PCs running several flavors of Linux, and showing off Compiz and that stuff. They gave us an (original!) Ubuntu 5.10 CD, which was the thing actually blew my mind off - a whole free OS! How that was possible?

Tried to install it in my PC at home (I could afford a crappy clonic when I got into uni) but, as usual, deleted all my stuff I had in my hard disk. That didn't put me off, though - we hadn't internet at home at that time, until some years after, but eventually I could manage to install it. Some years after using Ubuntu, pulled the trigger and installed Gentoo. That was in Jan. 2009 and hadn't distrohopped ever since, did my whole graphic design degree using FOSS and now in what I do for a living. Can't see myself using privative software.

not good enough in abstract mathematics, got a programming diploma instead because I liked computer graphics

When I was 16 I had to redo my year in high school because I flunked 10 out of 12 classes that did not interest me (languages and economics, I only passed my native language course and sports). I was forced to change orientation and I chose electronics/ICT because "I spent a lot of time on the computer (playing games)" and that was the only computer-related orientation that was available. That year I discovered C++ and labview, figured out programming machines was my thing, suddenly passed all classes without having to study. Around that time (circa 2004-5) I got hold of those Ubuntu disks, messed up my only desktop machine trying to install it (wiped drives, broken Xorg, that kind of stuff), learned a lot trying to get everything back up and it snowballed from there.

Fast forward a few years to college, still passing classes without studying because I had to "understand it" instead of "study it". Moved on from Ubuntu to Gentoo and learned a lot more.

Fast forward 12 years and now I'm a freelance backend/devops guy working mostly for healthcare companies, trying to use my skills for good after I got sick of money-chasing in ad-tech companies.

Also, I was really lucky to have a couple of good senior mentors during my first 5-7 years of working. (Thanks @gbin if you ever read this). Now I'm mentor to some junior devs.

In hindsight, flunking all those classes in high school due to lack of interest was necessary for me to discover my true calling.

was 12 yo. installed Windows 7 on our shitbox PC with 2005 tier hardware. but internet would not work (ancient ethernet driver for that chip with no updates for the changes that oocured with windows vista). I never knew how drivers worked. I just press install and it works. so I spent the next few years reading stuff. Now I understand a bit how these things work. and how operating systems work to some level.

Later on I got into programming because I wanted to impress my teacher with my visual basic.NET skills. (I had no prior programming experience at all and that course was in VB.NET). and then I discovered C++, C# (and what .NET actually is) and python. now I am a year away from graduating with a computer engineering degree.

I was introduced to linux through a friend. and used it for a bit and had it on some machines. and wrote some shell scripts to automate stuff. but I never fully embraced it. as I would only install it on machines struggling with Windows. either due to aging or faulty hardware. I know about what makes linux "better" and how one customize it to the kernel level. but Windows is simply a better workstation OS regardless of the great amounts of bazinga we hear nowadays. linux on server/embedded systems is greatness however.

I was at a summer thing for two weeks when I was 10, learning how to draw comics and illustrate. There was at the same time a course on making websites with MS Frontpage and publishing them on the city council's hosting service so I stumbled on that and ended up spending a few days putting my drawings online. After that, I played around making computer graphics for a year or so before we had a HTML course at my school.

That was kinda it, I ended up spending time with free webhosts and visual page building tools. This was around 2003 or so and after that I started to learn how to use FTP tools and and make websites from scratch.

From 2003 to 2007 I made a ton of basic sites for a ton of different projects like counter strike clans, tutorials, video game cheats etc. In 2008 I set up my first WordPress site to write reviews about electronic music and that kind of blew up and I outgrew my shared web hotel pretty fast with over 100k daily visitors and 1tb monthly traffic so after that I had to learn how to self-host on Linux VPS servers and how to build lighter sites with less db queries to keep up with the demand.

My site got hacked twice due to bad plugins and not understanding basic web security so in 2010 I moved into static site generators and separating file hosting (as that was 99% of the traffic) and the website. I finally ran the site down in 2013 because I lost interest in the music scene due to it changing too much.

These days I'm doing mostly client work, but I'm self taught so I have to be careful about the projects I pick as I'm not a stellar JS dev. I can do most basic operations from hosting and Linux server admin to frontend development and web design but most my of contracts are these days in UX design and usability studies and less on the technical side.

It was 1993 and I was homeless, living in a squat, working for bands by selling T-shirts at their gigs - I'd hitch hike to where they played to get paid £20 for the night before sleeping rough nearby. During this I collected names and addresses of their fans so that if the bands got new T-shirts there was the potential to contact the fans and let them know.

One of the bands - Elastica - wanted to shoot a music video and needed 100 fans to be in London in 2 weeks time... the band asked me if I could send a letter, I had 2,000 names and addresses and I got a few friends to volunteer and we hand-wrote 2k envelopes in 5 days and posted them with a phone number to call if you wanted to be in the video... then we went to the management company and manned the phone. They got their 100 fans and had a waiting list of another 200.

The band management company asked how we did this and whether they could put us on a retainer to do it in future as they had big plans for another band - Blur - and I pointed out that it was infeasible to write so many envelopes so often. But I believed a computer could do this, so if they bought me a computer and covered postage and packing, I would build a way to keep in touch with the fans of their acts.

They bought me an IBM 30386 and I had it in the upstairs of the squat. There was a hole in the roof so this part of the room was covered in tarp, and we stole the power from another loft as the hole in the roof granted crawlway access to other lofts. I had never used a computer before as I came from poverty, but I got a book from a library, a reference book on basic, and used that to programme a simple database based on text files, with index text files that I could then mail merge into envelope labels. Scaled that slowly up to be a full database (single user of course), and then a stock control system as staying in touch with fans meant we expanded into selling T-shirts mail order - which produced a surprising amount of revenue.

That was the start... and by then it was 1994 and a lot of the bands that were nothing were about to be something.

I got started in Linux when I was in my teens and played with amateur radio and Packet Radio (AX.25) in particular, some time around 1999. Back then I wrote a lot of small programs that helped me in my hobby so I almost never coded the for the sake of coding, but to solve real problems. That led me into a very happy career of EE and CS. If I had not started playing with CB radios some time around 1995 things would probably have gone quite different, as (before that episode) I was dead set on becoming a carpenter.

Installed Ubuntu on my Thinkpad in 2008 and never looked back.

I started going to 2600 meetings in the mid 1990s, which eventually lead to creating bots and similar tools for online chat platforms using VisualBasic 6. Then I switched focus from that to creating websites and launched a personal site on Geocities.

In the late 90s and early 2000s I started playing a lot of Quake 3 and built a gaming ladder with a friend (a free SAAS app basically) so groups of players can compete against each other. That kick started web development for me and even freelancing since it resulted in creating a lot of free (and some paid) sites for other gaming related things afterwards. Haven't looked back since.

My whole origins story is at https://gestaltit.com/exclusive/rich/nick-janetakis-it-origi....

Reading the comments here makes me feel old. I started with Linux over twenty years ago. Started as a teen. Continued to use it during my studies. Professional user during my PhD. Nowadays mostly at home.

http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/my_linux_history.html

In 2002 I installed widows xp and after 30 minutes of use I realized that Microsoft will never get their shit together. I'm on Linux ever since. Best Linux distro was Ubuntu 8.04, everything worked out of box, not even video tearing! It's downhill from back then but still good enough to stay. I'm using non mainstream wm so I'm not affected by fads anymore. I need to work, not change my habits on every os release.

Back in the days of Windows 98, I got tired of the "blue screen of death" that my computer was giving me most days.

I heard Linux was more stable, so I ordered a physical copy of red hat and got it running. No more blue screens.

I still use Linux today as my main driver at work and at home.

I was a young programmer in the 80's, cut my teeth on CP/M and then Unix .. MIPS Risc/OS, when MIPS made pizzaboxen .. sufficiently productive to be able to afford my own home lab gear .. and in at work comes a brand new 386 system instead of the X Workstation I wanted, and which apparently 'solved the problems of the x86 platform' .. yeah, no. I found some respite in a Quarterdesk/Desqview configuration, multitasking DOS terminal sessions, but it was .. severely .. lacking in what I wanted.

So, at home, I got a copy of a similar 386 box set up, and did what everyone did at the time: got on USENET to find out what else could be done. GNU/Hurd was 'gonna happen any day now', and I'd already switched to using a bunch of gnu tools, but nothing was really working out .. which lead me to minix-list.

Which is where I read Linus' post about his little kernel project.

And, in the months and years to follow from that point, I became an avid Linux user. Not long after, I brought a bootable Yggdrasil CD into work, and turned my cruddy DOS 'workstation' into a viable X host, albeit after about 5 days of compiling ..