Programmer Bio

I learned to program as a child in the 90’s back in the era when PCs came with sample games like QBASIC Nibbles, with included code for hobbyists and learners to play around with. It was sheer luck that this random interest of mine turned out to be a marketable, employable skill. My personal story plays into the narrative of the driven young autodidact, usually male (guilty), usually socially awkward (eh) and extremely neurodivergent (you be the judge), who has that “genius” to be a “real programmer”, perhaps at the expense of other qualities. But this is not my take-away. Anyone can learn how to program, even if they don’t write a line of code – or even touch a computer – until arbitrarily late in life. And unlike other forms of math and logic, it is accessible even to young children, and should be taught in schools alongside other subjects.