Introduce Yourself!

Have you ever wondered about the people behind the personas you encounter in the Devshed Forums? Are you ready to join our diverse family of international members and would like to tell us a little bit about yourself? Take a moment to introduce yourself here.

Welcome to Devshed Forums!





Here is the text of my original post that resulted in this sticky:

I was reading another post welcoming DevShedRich as a new admin. People were poking some fun at him for being "old" (born in 68). That got me curious about the demographics of Devshed users. Am I "old" relative to others user's on this site. Years in the industry? Families? That kind of thing.

Here is a little about me:

28 years old
Bachelors degree in Business Information Systems
3 years in the industry
-- windows desktop technical support - 3 yrs
-- perl programming - 5 months
Married 7 years
Three children

I'm older.

http://www.dougscode.com/forum4/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=38

Dang. In computer years, you are a dinosaur! . I have never even heard of such a computer.

My first computer was a Gateway 2000 286 with 40 meg hard drive and 2 meg of ram. The computer used a visual interface to DOS called QDOS. It used simple menus and a tree to help you get around the system. My brother though it would be funny to go to the color setup and change all of the colors so they were the same - black (text, background, foreground, highlight, everything). I had to go through all the keystrokes from memory to be able to get my color back.

OMG, you bought a Gateway

Fortunately, I can blame that one on my dad. I was only 12 at the time and had no say in the matter. It was a family christmas present!

I'm older than most.

42 years old
BS in CS
Married 17 years, 2 kids

First program was written on a TRS-80 with a circa 1963 black & white Zenith TV for a monitor. Used a leaderless cassette tape in a mono Panasonic tape deck to store the programs.

I used to carry Scotch tape to "edit" punch cards that had a typo. Covering the holes with tape and repunching the character was similar to that fancy backspace key you use today.

When I went to my first micro assembler class I had two 5.25" floppies: One for the OS. The other for my compiler and the programs. Hard drives were too expensive to put in the machines.

I can remember how excited I was the first time I saw a line editor on a dumb terminal.

I'm not as old as DougG or dcaillouet, but I'll confess that I have fiddled with some really old machines. The whole reason I got into computers was because of one really hot afternoon. I had some math homework to do and dad took me along to his office cuz he had work to do as well. Anyways, I was sitting in an airconditioned computer room because of the heat outside. That's when I discovered his PDP-11. My dad showed me how to write my first BASIC program to work out one chapter of my homework and the next thing you know, I was hooked .

For the record, my first home computer was a Sinclair Zx-80 Spectrum and I later got my hands on a Commodore C-64 (It belonged to a friend ). My dad did go through a whole bunch of PCs at his workplace, so I've actually fiddled with everything from the original 8088 based IBM PC up and once thought there was no way anyone could fill up the 20 MB HD of a PC-XT. When the first 286 came out, I didn't fiddle with it much, because I couldn't play any games on it. The trouble was that most of my games relied on loops instead of clock ticks, to make the game play at a proper speed. On a 286, most of my games ran too fast .

Hehe, it was good to delve into the past there... You just reminded me that I have a working Commie 64 in the closet .

Huh, ...
I was the one who called him "old", but I didn't really mean it like that. I feel like being a kid when meeting people who deal with PCs longer than me already... 20 years in business, hey I started primary school when he was already a pro....

I never had the luck to touch a PDP myself.... But I really need to get one from eBay if there is still any working ones around. Just for putting it in a glass cabinet to show to my children later.

I am 27yrs old, not married yet, no "formal education" (I quit university after 3 semesters because it bored me, but I plan to take it up again soon, I guess I am now mature enough to know what it is good for ).

Started with the C=64 at the age of 11 which immediately became my obsession. Did all kinds of weird stuff with it ("to it"? ) until I got my first 286/10 at the age of 13 or 14.

Started soldering my own circuits at 11 or 12, wrote my first lines of assembler on the C=64 at around the same time. Very active in the local BBS scene then , ran my own for about three years with a self-written turbo pascal 3.0 program. The internet was only accessible to me when I was about 18. Before that we only had "FIDO", "Mouse", "ZNet" and some other proprietary networks. And this also was when I downloaded my first SlackWare

In the industry since I was 18, but with several breaks since then.

- that's me -

nuff personal info, you are not gonna use this against me, will ya? lol...

Scorps: Never played "Spacewars"? "Leisure Suit Larry", "Space Quest" or "King's Quest"? "Ultima"?

M.

PS: I still have the C64, the "Datasette" and the 1541, those will go into a glass cabinet of course too

Jeez, I remember Leisure Suit Larry

I started out with a C64 @ 13 and taught myself basic with the book that came with it then. Been going ever since as long as I had any access to a computer.

I'm older then some, younger then others .
30 with only an AAS in CS but fixing to continue towards my end goal of a PH D. I will probably start back to school at the beginning of next year for my BS.
Been in the industry for ~5 years now but still feel like a relative novice. Been married for 2 years and the only kids I have are my dogs.

Learned QBASIC when I was 8 and made my own "operating system." Later I learned a bunch of other junk and became the big nerd I am today. My main language for just under three years is PHP. I am 19. I like cheese.

>>People were poking some fun at him for being "old" (born in 68).

Thats not old.

M.Hirsch: I played Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest and King's Quest -- used to have a clone of spacewar somewhere too. Those were later games though because I recall playing them on a 386. BTW I bought Leisure Suit Larry I-VII and the King's Quest Series a few years ago. With the original IBM PC, my main games were chess88, Digger, Bruce Artwick's Flight Simulator, AlleyCat and a Space Invaders clone.

So you still have a Datasette eh . I only have the C-64 and the 1541 drive here. My friend had a C-64 and a Datasette though, when I first encountered the C-64 --- his parents bought it in Germany, so the manuals were all in German .

For the record, my first *nix was actually made by Micro$oft and later sold to $CO. A lot of people don't know that Micro$oft actually sold a *nix for the PC called Xenix! My dad had a copy installed on his 386 and used it for e-mail mainly.