#mynerdstory - Sophia

#mynerdstory

My name is Sophia. Well, not really, but this story is too personal to be told with my real name. I was raised by an unemployed single mum in some Eastern European country. She wanted me to be pretty and popular and dress me up, but that didn't quite work out.

My first computer was a 386, which belonged to a lover of hers. He was an impatient, scary person, and I've long forgotten his name, but I never forgot the one time he tried to teach me PASCAL. I didn't quite get the concept of variables, and always thought that a=1, b=2,c=3,.. There is a minimum age to understanding abstractions, but apparently there is no limit to getting hit so hard that you fly across the room. He got kicked out after that and I got to keep that computer.

We had Windows 3'11. I used it for Paint and some riddiculous jump-and-run game. At age 8 or 9 I found a software called "Mediator", which was an early presentation software with some basic graphical programming. You could make buttons, there were some sort of timing and event structures and there were variables and conditions. By that time, I was in primary school, and I did get that concept.

I never had much access to outside information or a decent library and had never been exposed to other software, so I tried writing an operating system as my first project. It was the only thing I knew existed, but I didn't know exactly what an OS was. So I wrote a horrible, horrible something that had a start button like Windows 95, was pink and violet, and launched files. I finally gave up when I tried to write the "text editor" part of my so-called OS - but instead, I found something so much better: I had saved up enough money to buy Microsoft Encarta. Microsoft Encarta was the MOST AMAZING thing ever, and I spent so much time looking up all the questions nobody wanted to answer.

You don't hear me mentioning any friends, because I was an outcast. The stereotypical kid who hides away in the library, is bullied and gets pushed into lockers. I didn't know how to be cool. That didn't mean that I didn't want to.. you know, to not be hated or something, I was just.. too different.

I went to middle school. They had internet, they had computers, and most importantly, I stumbled upon a website on microcontroller computing - an 8031. I saved up all my pocket money for 6 months and got myself a development kit - and that was the beginning of a love story. I'll never forget the moment I made a LED light up by pressing a button - it was magic!In a rare, a glorious, a defining moment, I realised that this was going to change everything: I could press a button on the computer and something "real" would happen! I could do anything! Now I just needed a motor and it would move!

Except that the motor (I took it from my mums' mixer.. she was not happy) didn't move, because it needed more current than it could draw. But I had the internet (of course, I soon had my own webpage on some free hosting website, and maintained a link list and bothered professors from all over the world with childish and trivial questions) and our high school had a decent library with old textbooks on electronics.

What followed, was an incredibly productive and inspiring time where I simply soaked up everything I could find. It took me 6 months to build a physical key logger for the schools computer and hack it. I probably deserved being almost kicked out of school.

Being an ugly, way too smart, poor girl who lacked basic social skills was not pretty and I was constantly riddiculed and bullied. But I had my microcontrollers, sometimes people wrote nice things into my guestbooks, and even though I never had a Nokia 3310, I had programmed that 'Snake' game for myself. At age 13, I started learning calculus. At 15 I started with linear algebra, college level.

Then, my mum finally had enough of me being weird, and kicked me out. I dropped out of school and became a data entry clerk. Most of the time, I had to transfer data from one system to another, which was boring and stupid. I found a way to access the database with COM, and automated the shit out of it - replacing myself with VBA. The code sucked, but it did the job, so I spent my days surfing the internet.

Until my boss caught me after a few months. But instead of kicking me out, as he should have done - he did something nobody had ever done before: He took a chance on me.

He gave me two weeks to automate one of his boring QM tasks - and I did it in two days. This is how I became the most dedicated and loyal junior programmer he ever had. I staid with his company until I was twenty - and he found a way to send me to college without a high school diploma. I graduated within two years. Then I moved to the UK.

This is where I am now. A software engineer, three years out of college.
It was not easy. It still isn't. I'm working in industrial automation, and it's a rough environment. There's stereotyping, there is discrimination, there are people who make jokes about my tits and I've been sexually harrassed by a customer and I'm constantly confused with my own secretary.
But it is worth it.
Because I found friends who wear Star Trek T-Shirts and read hackernews. Because I escaped poverty and can travel and learn as much as I want to. And most importantly, because I can make something move with a single key stroke. A motor perhaps, or a thousand.
And that is as close to magic as I can get.