How did you get started in programming?
Well I was curious about computers, we didn't have computers at schools or at home. I worked in a building, cleaning windows and floors, there were a lot of computers in there and a AS/400 in a sacred cold room. A guy in that office allowed me to play some games in his monochromatic dumb station, he inserted a 1.44 disk with Tetris, Zelda and Pacman and we played sometimes. Then they allowed me to do my homework in ProfessionalWrite and WordPerfect. So I started to realize that great things could be possible with computers. When I went to college I studied "Accounting" (my skill and aptitude's exam said that I fit in the profile), however in the "programming for accountans" class I fell in love with programming. As soon as I could I bought a 386 PC that allowed me to code more and more. I participated is some local programming contests and wrote tiny programs at school. I never really worked as Accountant, as soon as I finished college I started coding for money :)
What was your first language?
Pascal. I love Pascal, maybe because it was my first language. Even though I used it only a couple of years.
What was your first professional programming gig?
Working on SATEC, I wrote PCSoft, an ERP system written in VB6 connected to Access databases. Hehe its software is still used today at some companies. I'm not very proud of it but I remember it with nostalgia.
If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?
For sure :) . If I knew then what I know now, maybe I would have started early. I formally study programming at University but I would have liked to start early.
If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
Don't settle with what you are doing today. Always find ways to get more efficient. Getting started with new technologies, at least test them. Learn as much as you can about what you are doing. Keeping in mind that learning never ends, you will discover great things.
What's the most fun you've ever had … programming?
I remember a software I wrote with a pal. It had a lot of tables to CRUD, back then I didn't know about generators, O/R Mapers, etc. So I decided to write a "windows forms" generator. It was based on xml metadata that my routing parsed and built the windows on-the-fly. It was very fun to do such a generator. At the end of the day it was a bad decision coz the project got delayed, the generator wasn't very fast and made the per-window customization very difficult. Anyway I learned a lot. Of course today I use LLBLGen Pro so much that I forgot how to not use it :)
So who's next?
- Gustavo Gonzalez
- Erick Quijivix
- Víctor Álvarez
- Fernando Matzdorf
- Jorge Ortiz
