I started off my IT life in the late 70’s programming in Assembler and Machine code in engineering applications initially and then business focussed (specifically ERP software).
My 1st “high level” language was the original “C” loaded by magtape onto a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) computer.
This led to really wanting to understand how computers worked resulting in building a Z80 based computer from a kit so I could study how the “chips” and the software interacted. Was thousands of solder connections and lots of digital debugging with a probe and oscilloscope (because it didn’t work at first) so took some time :-)
There were a lot of great books for Z80 machine code and assembler plus the full reference manuals were available for the Z80 chip (plus the supporting chips) so was the ideal relatively low cost way for a digital hobbyist at the time (unfortunately never had the brains or maths to be an electronics engineer).
While none of this is necessary today it did lead to my life long passion in all things IT related and started me off on the journey of a 40+ year continuous professional career in IT from working for multi-nationals to co-founding my own successful software company.
A big part of this journey was combining the business and sales side of IT with my “nerd” interests fairly early on in my career.
I’ve only recently retired and planning on starting my blog on HashNode where I will share some of my experiences that are hopefully both entertaining and helpful to others.