I have been doing web since 1997 or may be earlier... cannot remember. I remembered I bought a thick book called HTML and I started to write webpage and setup websites since. I remembered I was so excited after doing web pages for a while, then I saw the animated gifs come out to public... it was really cool to see it moves... Actually, the very first programming language for me was BASIC on Apple IIe. That was a long time ago!
After graduating from college, I was working in a non-computer job since I was not majored in computer related fields. However, beside my regular job, I never stop developing websites and it looks like that were my hobbies which I didn't notice. I even developed a website for this small company that I was working for and also developed an information system using Access since they could not afford to purchase one at that time and I also automated their invoice using Excel/VBA. So I also studied VB5 and VB6.
One day I decided that I should change my career to computer related field since it had much better pay than my current job. But which computer field should I enter in. You might say... "programming, of course.." since what I did that related to computer was "programming". However, the funny thing was that I did not see myself doing programming because I had no clue what a real programmer does at that time, and I thought that job will be tough and required some background in software engineering studies. I didn’t have luxury of time since I need something that can change my career in a few months, not years. From choices of design, programming, database, and networking, I chose networking instead... very surprised, huh? The reason that I choose networking was that I thought as long as I have the knowledge about networking, I should be able to land a computer administrator job. In addition, I think in the shortest amount of time, I can complete the study of networking on my own since I could not afford to go to school both in time and money.
After I set my goals, within 3-4 months of studies, I successfully passed all 6 Microsoft Certified Exams for the title of Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE) in one day at first try. I was pretty happy and thought that this would be my ticket to enter the computer field.
Ready for another surprise?
So after posting my job online for system administrator or network administrator and included all of my previous computer related experience, I got a job interview from a big computer company that is public held. The surprise thing was that I thought I was going to get the interview for networking, but they were looking for software engineer doing intranet programming and I received my written programming exam right there. My feeling was mixed and afraid of missing my big opportunity, and when I sat in that room and received that thick programming test. It had just blown me away. Well, I just said to myself, I would just do my best and let them decide. So I turned the pages, and started doing it, it was not multiple choices, and it was all short answered questions about everything from HTML to Language C. I felt comfortable hand write those HTML codes because when I learned HTML, I used notepad, and didn’t use programs such as MS FrontPage (not free course!). When I turned to Language C and Java pages, I was almost faint because I never write anything in such language in any of my work, but only read books about it. Luckily, no hand written code type of questions, there were just question and answer about its basic programming knowledge and terminology.
Surprised, surprised, I got that job and was commented that I did very well on the exam compared to others since writing HTML code was one of main things they were looking for. From there I entered into the computer field and had worked for many companies since.
