Ask HN: How did you become a software engineer?
&gt;  How did you first get into programming? Were any books, blogs, forums, or people particularly helpful for your growth? What is it about coding that got you hooked?<p>First, first started with a web-page summer class in middle-school. We learned HTML and a tiny bit of CSS&#x2F;JS, all handwritten in Notepad and copied and pasted into Geocities (c. 2002)<p>I was strong in math and science at a young age and wanted to be an astronaut, but wearing glasses, I decided being an engineer (of some sort) would be better.<p>In High School, I went to an engineering Magnet school, so I got to play with Lego Mindstorm and other robotics. We built a solid-state rocket that broke the sound barrier and I helped program the beacon used to help find it when it came down.<p>Between high school and college, I picked up &quot;C++ for Dummies&quot; and while I didn&#x27;t learn much, it at least introduced some concepts (like pointers and classes) and syntax.<p>In college, the books I consider the most influential were: &quot;The Pragmatic Programmer&quot; (that&#x27;s a career-defining book) and my favorite languages were C (&quot;The C Programming Language&quot; by K&amp;R) and Ruby (&quot;The Ruby Programming Language&quot; from O&#x27;Reilly).<p>For today&#x27;s programers, I&#x27;d suggest Python (it&#x27;s ubiquitous, and perfect for learning and building fundamentals) and&#x2F;or JavaScript (also ubiquitous for working with the web).<p>&gt; What is your experience with university? Did you get a degree, was it worth it, do you think it helped you find work, what did you love&#x2F;hate about uni?<p>I went to a state college (Texas Tech University) because it&#x27;s what my family could afford. I got into more prestigious colleges (MIT, NYU) but would&#x27;ve had to take on massive college debt as I didn&#x27;t qualify for much financial aid nor many scholarships. (Not rich enough or genius enough nor poor nor dumb). I still decided to make the best of my situation and replicate the MIT EE&#x2F;CS program by dual-majoring in Electrical Engineering &amp; Computer Science.<p>I&#x27;m really glad I did EE&#x2F;CS dual-major b&#x2F;c it gave me a full spectrum of understanding: from electrons-&gt;fields-&gt;gates-&gt;circuits-&gt;low-level architecture-&gt;operating systems-&gt; C -&gt; C++ -&gt; Java -&gt; Python -&gt; Lisp<p>Also at the time, CS wasn&#x27;t as solid of a career path after the dot-com bubble. It was honestly nice to have an EE degree as a &quot;backup&quot; and I also did most of my programming for my EE lab work.<p>Given that I made the frugal decision to stay in-state, take on minimal loans by living at home, and got two degrees out of 5-years, and the college really helped me find my first job through career fairs (even in the tail-end of a recession), I would definitely say that a degree was worth it. I was also the first in my family to ever graduate from college, which was&#x2F;is a major source of pride for me and my family. I also met my fiancé-now-wife in college and other life-long friends. I worked through college at the college IT dept as well, in addition to my 15-18hr course load. This got me tangentially-relevant work experience. College and work taught me how to study and work efficiently and effectively.<p>There&#x27;s definitely a larger no-degree movement and I would never say you need a degree; there&#x27;s also a lot a degree entails that is nonsense.<p>My EE &amp; CS classes were worthwhile and taught me the most fundamental concepts of programming: language (as in language design, compilers, interpreters), functions, recursion, pointers. You really understand &quot;the stack&quot; when you build C-function calls in assembly. You understand compiler errors better when you&#x27;ve written one. Again, not saying you <i>need</i> to go to university to learn these things; just sharing that these parts were what&#x27;s valuable.<p>&gt; How did you get your first paid work (family &amp; friends, internship, freelance, full-time)?<p>Career fair and interviewing pretty much my whole last year at uni. I already had an internship, which also greatly helped.<p>&gt; What do you do now and what do you love&#x2F;hate about your job?<p>I&#x27;m a senior software engineer. I love the coding and the scale and scope at which my work applies. I can launch features to literally millions of people and help generate hundreds of millions of dollars in donations<i>. I get to learn new concepts and apply them.<p>I love that I pretty much set my hours, I work comfortably indoors. I work remotely, so my gym, my dog, and my wife are just a room or two away. I don&#x27;t like office nonsense (arguing over fridge space or who filled the coffee or what did you do this weekend), so remote is fantastic. And I </i>love* the pay.<p>I hate the inefficiencies and bad politics, but that&#x27;s just part of white-collar work. When people would rather feel right or appear smart than <i>be</i> right or smart. When metrics are given priority over substance; when how something is measured is prioritized over what the measurement was meant to represent (an analogy would be chasing a higher credit score while you&#x27;re in deep debt to your family or losing weight by cutting off a limb). Long-term results are sacrificed for short-term gains.<p>I&#x27;m happy to share more.<p>* My opinions are my own and not my employers. I don&#x27;t speak for them nor they for me.