Love at first site is a thing. I felt it as a teenager in 1983. I climbed out of my parents station wagon and walked through the front door of my uncle's house. A strange box sat on their living room desk. My cousin booted it up, then casually typed something into it.
He told it what to do. It did it. I was absolutely enthralled.
My cousin went on to demonstrate many of the Commodore 64’s features as I sat rapt beside him.
That night, I waited until everyone had gone to sleep, then snuck into the living room. I balanced the Commodore 64's phonebook-like manual on my lap. I squinted in the blue glow of the monitor and transferred line after line of code from the manual into the command line, my fingers pattering against its space age keyboard. By dawn, I'd brought a pixelated little man to life on the screen.
The Commodore 64 stoked my imagination. I saw my future, and it was very different from my present. Rosie the Robot Maid was fetching me an exquisite meal from a Star Trek-like food replicator. I leaned over an ornate computer terminal, dressed like a victorian aristocrat. Machines whirred around me, actualizing my every whim and fancy while I laughed.
Just as the sun climbed to scorch away my enchanted evening with the Commodore 64, my high school guidance counselor towered over me, squelching my newfound passion. He told me, with a shrug, that my math grades were too low for me to ever do anything meaningful with computers.
Life went on. I graduated from high school. I loved computers, but it seemed I wasn't cut out for working with them, and I needed to make money. So I enrolled in cosmetology school and became a manicurist. It was fun and easy, and I made decent enough money.
I got married. Once I got pregnant, the fumes from the chemicals we used to apply false nails made me nauseous, and I had to quit. For the next few years I stayed home with the kids and took jobs administrative assistant jobs through temp agencies to help out with the bills.
I watched from the sidelines as computers marched from desks to laps to pockets. In the late 90's, I was browsing Usenet and learned of something called "Linux". I decided I absolutely had to get my hands on it.
I was sometimes able to steal away time when my children slept or were in school, and the next chance I got I installed Linux. Once again, a brighter, technology-powered future seem to unfold in front of me. I loved Linux. Not just because it was open, but also because it felt open. I felt encouraged to poke around at the code under the hood, and even tweaked it some.
But as the children got older - and life got busier - I put away my toys. I switched back to Windows and focused on learning what, at the time, seemed like more practical skills. I wanted to be a more valuable administrative assistant, so I mastered Microsoft Excel, Word and Outlook.
Still, sometimes I'd find opportunities to use the knowledge I'd picked up from building my own Linux machines. I'd help people around the office with hardware installation and network debugging. And in those fleeting moment, I'd ascend from secretary to moderately helpful IT help desk technician. But then a phone would ring and pull me out the door to run errands, or find me schedule meetings for my bosses.
Looking back on that period in my life, I was actually just shy of being satisfied. At least I was working with computers and keeping my family going.
But that changed when my husband took ill. I quit my job so I could stay home full time and take care of him. Our youngest child was just entering adolescence, and we felt that it was better for me to be at home to support him through his father's illness.
When my husband passed away in 2009, it was just me and my son left at home. My other children had grown up and started families of their own. I was faced with the prospect of going back to a career I didn’t exactly love, or of finding a new one.
Even then, it still didn’t occur to me that programming computers might be a viable option. I still heard the voice of that high school guidance counselor telling me I wasn't good enough at math. So I went back into cosmetology and started working as a makeup artist.
It was fun doing makeup. I learned how to build a network and how to work that network. I met a ton of interesting people and helped them look their best. But it never really felt like it was who I was actually meant to be. You see, at the end of the day, everyone washes off their makeup. And then it's kind of like that makeup was never applied in the first place.
I decided I needed to do something of permanence. I needed to do something that ultimately mattered.
I am a woman. Like it or not, that is a defining feature of who I am. Wife. Mother. Grandmother. And I knew that there were women out there who had somehow managed to succeed midway through their lives. So I hit the books. I read everything I could about these women. The software entrepreneurs. The programmers. And along the way, I discovered entire networks of women who were simply ignoring society's implicit designation of software engineering as a men's field.
As I read their stories and watched their talks, I began to realize that these women were just doing what I'd started to do but had stopped. They'd had the same vision as me: of empowering themselves by telling machines what to do. They'd chased the same rabbit that I'd stalked across those dawn-lit living rooms. But they'd turned it into a career.
Not only did I come to the realization that this had been my calling all along, I was also excited to find out that I was already part of the way there. In working with early PCs, and then Linux, I'd cultivated the "developer mindset". I had put in time scratching my head while reading and rereading software documentation. I even understood HTML, CSS and JavaScript well enough to integrate other people's code into my web pages to make them more interactive.
So two months ago, I stopped actively seeking makeup gigs. I signed up for a Skillcrush.com web development course. That got me started, but I quickly concluded that if I was going to really work in the industry as a software engineer, I'd need to supplement these courses with tutorials, and build as many web applications as possible. I joined FreeCodeCamp.com's community. Now I spend most of my waking hours coding in JavaScript.
I still take the occasional makeup gig if something fun comes up, and I still enjoy it. But now I've found something I enjoy more.
Now, when I look at those awkward high school photos of myself, I start to feel light. It's been a winding journey. But that robot maid and that food replicator are finally back in my line of sight.
He told it what to do. It did it. I was absolutely enthralled.
My cousin went on to demonstrate many of the Commodore 64’s features as I sat rapt beside him.
| Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.  |
| My first love - the 1983 Commodore 64. |
The Commodore 64 stoked my imagination. I saw my future, and it was very different from my present. Rosie the Robot Maid was fetching me an exquisite meal from a Star Trek-like food replicator. I leaned over an ornate computer terminal, dressed like a victorian aristocrat. Machines whirred around me, actualizing my every whim and fancy while I laughed.
| Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.  |
| I envisioned myself as a modern Ada Lovelace. She was the world's first programmer, and my it's most stylish. |
Life went on. I graduated from high school. I loved computers, but it seemed I wasn't cut out for working with them, and I needed to make money. So I enrolled in cosmetology school and became a manicurist. It was fun and easy, and I made decent enough money.
I got married. Once I got pregnant, the fumes from the chemicals we used to apply false nails made me nauseous, and I had to quit. For the next few years I stayed home with the kids and took jobs administrative assistant jobs through temp agencies to help out with the bills.
| Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.  |
| An overwhelming majority of computer science students are male, and this trend has only worsened in recent decades. (image source: Robert L. Mitchell with Computer World) |
I was sometimes able to steal away time when my children slept or were in school, and the next chance I got I installed Linux. Once again, a brighter, technology-powered future seem to unfold in front of me. I loved Linux. Not just because it was open, but also because it felt open. I felt encouraged to poke around at the code under the hood, and even tweaked it some.
But as the children got older - and life got busier - I put away my toys. I switched back to Windows and focused on learning what, at the time, seemed like more practical skills. I wanted to be a more valuable administrative assistant, so I mastered Microsoft Excel, Word and Outlook.
Still, sometimes I'd find opportunities to use the knowledge I'd picked up from building my own Linux machines. I'd help people around the office with hardware installation and network debugging. And in those fleeting moment, I'd ascend from secretary to moderately helpful IT help desk technician. But then a phone would ring and pull me out the door to run errands, or find me schedule meetings for my bosses.
Looking back on that period in my life, I was actually just shy of being satisfied. At least I was working with computers and keeping my family going.
But that changed when my husband took ill. I quit my job so I could stay home full time and take care of him. Our youngest child was just entering adolescence, and we felt that it was better for me to be at home to support him through his father's illness.
When my husband passed away in 2009, it was just me and my son left at home. My other children had grown up and started families of their own. I was faced with the prospect of going back to a career I didn’t exactly love, or of finding a new one.
| Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.  |
| Me in 1983. You can tell it was 1983 because of the tell-tale Flock of Seagulls hair. I knew programming was my destination. I just didn't know how long it would take to get there. |
It was fun doing makeup. I learned how to build a network and how to work that network. I met a ton of interesting people and helped them look their best. But it never really felt like it was who I was actually meant to be. You see, at the end of the day, everyone washes off their makeup. And then it's kind of like that makeup was never applied in the first place.
I decided I needed to do something of permanence. I needed to do something that ultimately mattered.
I am a woman. Like it or not, that is a defining feature of who I am. Wife. Mother. Grandmother. And I knew that there were women out there who had somehow managed to succeed midway through their lives. So I hit the books. I read everything I could about these women. The software entrepreneurs. The programmers. And along the way, I discovered entire networks of women who were simply ignoring society's implicit designation of software engineering as a men's field.
As I read their stories and watched their talks, I began to realize that these women were just doing what I'd started to do but had stopped. They'd had the same vision as me: of empowering themselves by telling machines what to do. They'd chased the same rabbit that I'd stalked across those dawn-lit living rooms. But they'd turned it into a career.
Not only did I come to the realization that this had been my calling all along, I was also excited to find out that I was already part of the way there. In working with early PCs, and then Linux, I'd cultivated the "developer mindset". I had put in time scratching my head while reading and rereading software documentation. I even understood HTML, CSS and JavaScript well enough to integrate other people's code into my web pages to make them more interactive.
So two months ago, I stopped actively seeking makeup gigs. I signed up for a Skillcrush.com web development course. That got me started, but I quickly concluded that if I was going to really work in the industry as a software engineer, I'd need to supplement these courses with tutorials, and build as many web applications as possible. I joined FreeCodeCamp.com's community. Now I spend most of my waking hours coding in JavaScript.
I still take the occasional makeup gig if something fun comes up, and I still enjoy it. But now I've found something I enjoy more.
Now, when I look at those awkward high school photos of myself, I start to feel light. It's been a winding journey. But that robot maid and that food replicator are finally back in my line of sight.