I was just talking to a friend about programming. She’s interested for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is that she’s read all about how ‘programming is the future’ and that tech people make tons of money.
We talked about some things that I thought would be useful to share more openly — so here it is: my advice for getting into programming, System Administration, or any other technology path.
Here’s something that surprises many people: I actually don’t have a college degree. Before I got into System Administration, I did all kinds of things: I’ve been a soldier, carpet salesman, martial arts teacher, Chinese massage (Tui Na) practitioner, data entry temp, bakery worker, and a few other things.
On the surface, these don’t look like they are related to System Administration, but each of these other attempts at ‘finding the right career’ taught me something valuable that I still use today in System Administration and Development work.
For example, all that ‘unrelated‘ experience has taught me how to