I wanted to get a link down to this thread at LLBLGen's forums - I stop to think back to my first encouter with conputers. While I don't remember how old I was, it must have been the mid 80's or so when my parents got a Vic 20 . I didn't really get it, and just remember how cool I thought it was that I could pull out a cassette tape and store stuff to it. I was overwhelmed by the whole concept of computers and actually was much more at home playing street football and trying to get out of homework.

I did take a programming class in Junior High School (link temporarily down... here is another) where we used a TRS 80 (thanks to 1000bit for the picture), but again, I didn't really get the point. If I remember correctly Mr. Kepner (this teachers husband, who must not be working there anymore) was my teacher, but that is about all I can remember. He was a great teacher, but I can't honestly say that I remember anything about programming from that class.

During High School - I didn't do much of anything, much less anything with computers.

During college I did get more involved in computers but more from a user standpoint than a coder. My degree was in MIS, but it was in the Walker College of Business and was from much more of a management perspective (I did take a COBOL class or three, and I do remember one class on Modeling and Simulation in BASIC) but we still always felt far inferioer to the CS guys. Still didn't get it.

Went to work for Samaritan's Purse for several years as a DBA and System manager and still didn't get it.

I started a web hosting company in 1996 (LCO Internet) and did a little coding here and there for clients. I could get my way around in Perl, PHP and ASP, but still didn't really get it. One of our clients needed some help on another project and I made my first foray into coding in VB 6.

Several years later and many different iterations of the same project with different owners and I still work for, am the lead developer, and am partners in the same company. However, I still don't, nor think that I ever truely will, get coding... Sure I understand OOP, try my best to adhere to best practices, and have added lots of different tools to my skillset over the years... But I still don't understand binary math nor can I convert hex in my head. I am a reluctant programmer, but it has become just about everything I do. I enjoy it to no end, but again really don't get it . At some point, maybe I'll get there - but for now, I'm just glad I have a job.