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

The next summer a friend asked if I could get him an account on the University's VMS system. I didn't think that was a good idea so I went in search of an alternative. Several tries later and I have been a Debian user ever since.

In early 1998 I parleyed that gig into a staff sysadmin role with the department after I hired my boss. Used that to move states and started into my fastest career growth year, 1998, with a 347% pay increase over 4 roles. Ended the year as a network/server group supervisor and Solaris admin. It has been a fun trip since.

The foot-in-the-door moment was in the fall of 1996. I was in the lecture portion of an Intro to Computers required freshman course. This was my third go at college and things had changed since I went a few years before. The lecture was on the history of computing and the lab was how to use MS Word. I happened to have been reading a computer history book and was firing off answers to the Profs questions as quick as he could ask them. He stopped mid-sentence and asked me if I wanted a job. Luckily I followed up.

When I was in 5th grade, my teacher was taking classes for her masters at the local university, and was given an apple II to take to her classroom. I stayed after school every day for the month she had the computer, and worked on projects in Logo.

In middle school, we had an Apple II clone (Franklin Ace 1000), and I would type in games from magazines. That's how I learned to program. I was a terrible typist, and would always have bugs that I had to figure out. I eventually started modifying the games on purpose, and doing that became more fun than actually playing the games.

When I was in college in the late 80s / early 90s, I idolized our CS department sysadmin, who sat in a dark office, listening to cool music, and porting BSD to weird computers (DG Aviion). I was hooked, and decided I wanted a job like that. I bailed out of an MS degree program to take a sysadmin job. A few years later, I moved to a job as research staff in the CS department, where I got to write device drivers for high speed network cards and eventually got paid to port FreeBSD to the DEC Alpha.

Things changed when my dad bought a modem in 93 or so. We had Compuserve but it was expensive. Through Boardwatch magazine I started to try out local BBSes (916). Eventually a few like 24th Street Exchange and this BBS sucks became my online homes. 24th was particularly interesting as it was large (10s of lines), had Fidonet and possible Usenet feeds. Oh and it ran on a BSD. I learned a lot there.

Two key inflection points came:

1) I saw my first demo which made me want to learn to code in 94 (heartquake by iguana ; thanks guys!)

2) around 94-95 I heard about Linux and ended up with a Slackware disc from Walnut Creek.

In 1995 came full internet access with a whole new set of rabbit holes. Usenet, cipherpunks, IRC, etc.

Over times my interest varied as a teenager would. Upon starting college in 98 I had amassed a lot of experience - coding, graphics, graphic design (2d and 3D), web dev, Linux, building computers, etc. At the time I didn’t realize it, but this constant exploration and learning helped me build a huge set of tools that have served me well in my career.

In the end, the biggest lesson? Learn. Follow your curiosity. Roadblocks? find a way around, worst case, spot the dead ends and try again.