The stack — VB6, Macros, MS Access

The Experience — 0 Years

The Job — Start of High school

Where do I even begin?

Like I stated in the prologue, I was fascinated with tech from a very young age. What I failed to mention before is that thanks to my loving and understanding parents, my curiosity was not killed in school. That’s mostly thanks to the fact that in my house I could always take any “junk” home to take apart and learn how it ticks.

My first steps

At the age of 13, I was already pretty good on a PC, but haven’t really dived into programming yet. My first real time was when I went to a few VB6 classes and convinced my parents to buy me a book.

For me it was like magic, I could tell the computer what to do and it would do it, as long as I didn’t fuck it up somehow (which happened a lot at that time). I wrote small dumb things, what most would call a “Hello World”.

I’ve been a bad boy

It was around the my second year of High school when I noticed how bad the computer system at school was, how weak the security was, and of course I had to find out if I could beat it. But being the goodie two shoes I was, I was scared to do it, and if it wasn’t for the fact that the guy in charge of said system told me I was wrong (he thought it was secure), I wouldn’t have even tried.

So I did what had to be done, I got hold of *.pwl files (win 98 password files, and yes I am a dinosaur), and found out how to crack them. I wrote my first brute force script and made all the PCs in class run it at night. Luckily for me the password was short and within a few weeks it was cracked.

You have got to start somewhere

Yes I know what you are going to say, what a geek, nerd, … Yes, I spent my free time teaching myself programming. No, I wouldn’t change that. I’m not much of a reader (till this day I can’t read for fun), but somehow going through a programming book was not a chore and I learned a ton. I think the most important part was that it interested me and I was passionate about it.

Today is different, but I highly recommend to anyone to just give it a try, go take a course online, or use YouTube, or even just go though GitHub. Today it’s sooo much easier and more accessible. Who knows you may just find that programming is your dream job.

If you would like to check out our open source library and leave feedback we would appreciate it greatly.