Why and how did I become a programmer?

Part 1 – The beginning

I have not had an ordinary life. From the moment I was born, I was trouble, not bad trouble but the kind of trouble that curiosity causes.

If I had been born within the last 20 years then my poor parents would have been under constant investigation by the social services because I was always at the emergency ward getting stitched up or repaired because I had inevitably cracked my head open or gashed a part of my body!

I could not help myself! If there was a tree to climb, roof to scamper across or deserted building to investigate then you could guarantee that I would be there.

I actually count myself as being blessed because I should have died many times over but somehow, I made it through and even though I had the wounds to prove it, I always came out the other end with a smile on my face and occasionally a few tears running down my cheeks when I saw the blood!

And that is how it starts. You have to be curious if you want to enjoy the world of programming. You have to constantly be questioning everything. My teachers used to hate me because I could never settle for the this is how it is so shut up and learn!

If I could not understand the reason behind the teaching then I would ask and ask and ask questions that a lot of the teachers could not answer because like everyone else they where just parroting the information.

I was born in Orrell, a small town in the North of England but I did not stay there. My dad was a gifted engineer. He loved his work and he lived for his work. In the 70’s the UK was in a poor way and exciting opportunities where thin on the ground. My parents could see this, my dad was frustrated at the lack of opportunity to progress and so they made the decision to move to greener pastures.

The first country we moved to was Australia, where we spent three glorious years living just outside of Brisbane. Then it was back to England for a brief period before moving on to Saudi Arabia.

In the 1970s Saudi Arabia was a very different country to what it has now become. When we arrived there was sporadic, electricity, we got our water from a well and the very first day I went to school our bus crashed and flipped over! Needless to say, there was another visit to a hospital but once again I walked away from the accident!

Saudi Arabia was also the making of our family. My dad was a very hard worker and if you could tolerate the conditions then you could save a lot of money. In those days the expatriate life was like nothing anyone had experienced before. Yes, alcohol was forbidden but just about everyone was involved in brewing their own special blend.

The contract that my dad started on revolved around building a huge port and if there was a way of smuggling whisky out of the port then you could guarantee that someone knew how to do it!

I was only 7 when I learned about this. I would often go fishing at the port with an old man who my dad knew and also worked on the same project. One day I was with him when I caught a shark! Yes, that’s right a huge shark (well it was huge when I was only 7). It took me 1 hour to reel it in with the help of the old man and once we had beached it, he threw open the trunk of the car and chucked it in. Even at 7 I knew that most people did not eat sharks so I was curious as to why he had done this but did not say anything.

On the way out of the port we pulled into a small yard which had a dilapidated old cabin situated in the corner of the yard. We pulled up next to it and jumped out. The old man then walked over to the cabin, unlocked it and ducked in. A few minutes later he emerged with 5 bottles of whisky and a glint in his eyes. He then opened the boot of the car and proceeded to shove the 5 bottles of whisky down the shark’s mouth and into its gut! This is no exaggeration! It really did happen. As a 7-year-old I was completely blown away by what I was witnessing. He then told me to that what ever happened within the next 20 minutes that I was not to mention what I had just seen to anyone until we got out of the port.

Ten minutes later we rolled up at the checkpoint to exit the port. The poor guard walked round the car as they always did and then insisted that we open the boot to check for illegal contraband. I laugh now because it was such a bizarre scenario but the truth is that if we had been caught with 5 bottles of Whisky then that old man would have spent a lot of time in jail and as a 7-year-old I had no idea what they would have done to me!

Well that guard leapt back when he opened the boot and was confronted with a dead shark taking up the whole of the trunk. He quickly closed the boot and shoed us away and that was when I realized that there are rules to everything but there are also many ways to bend those rules and that is also another important lesson to learn when it comes to programming!

Alas the poor shark had served its purpose and when we got home that night it ended up as dog food but the five bottles of whisky that was in its gut was the making of some very good parties for the adults and that’s all that mattered to us kids because whilst the parents partied us kids where also out there getting into all sorts of mischief.

?That was not the only occasion that I went on a booze run. On another occasion I was at the port with my dad when he suggested that we went out on a tug boat with one of his best friends who was a port diver. Eager as a beaver I had no objections to jumping on a tug boat and heading out to sea. The only problem was that on this particular day the sea was rough and when I mean rough the waves where actually crashing over the entire tug.

Now if it had been some modern built vessel then this would have not been a problem, but it wasn’t! It was an old rust bucket with a hole in the main window and when the waves hit the boat the water funnelled through the hole and drenched all of us on board.

I was terrified. I could not stay standing; I was soaked to the bone and the hardened sea men were taking the piss and joking about my weak sea legs. After the first hour of what seemed like a never-ending rollercoaster to hell, I curled up into a ball in the corner of the pilot house and prepared myself for death!

By the time we pulled up alongside the huge container ship that we had been heading out to even the men had gone quite due to the conditions.

As we attempted to align ourselves with the ship you could feel the tension and excitement emanating from the crew. This was not going to be easy. One minute the container ship was bearing down like a mountain and the next minute we were looking down on the ship as the relentless waves made it almost impossible for us to line up with it.

At this point I had no idea why we were trying to pull along side this ship until a tiny figure onboard the ship dropped a line over the side and attached to that line was a crate of whisky!

I was risking my life for a bloody crate whisky?

I can’t tell you how many attempts it took to get that crate because by this point it became a blur of water gushing through the window, the threat of the ship smashing into us and the rush of people dashing round but what I can say is that the diver went overboard and some twenty minutes later the rest of the crew was hauling the crate of whisky on board followed by the diver and everyone was patting each other on the back!

And that was my next lesson about life which flowed into my developing career. If you take the right people into a venture then no matter how rocky the road may become somehow the team will pull through and produce results.

Needless to say, that when we finally made it back to the port I jumped of that boat and kissed the ground and vowed never to step foot on another tug!

If you liked what you have read then please leave a comment and I will continue with my crazy journey on how and why I became developer.