In 2011 I started computer science at the University of Reading. They accepted me on the strength of the things I’d built.
It didn’t last. My application got muddled, and by the time it was sorted out, the only room left was in the cheapest halls, due to be demolished at the end of the year. There was no insulation. People drank in the hallways, doors banged all night, and someone was always hammering on my door to hang out. I couldn’t sleep. I’ve always struggled with depression, and it took over. A few months in, I left.
I went home and spent the next four and a half years at my dad’s IT shop, The Processor Centre, looking after thirty-odd local companies. The work ranged from replacing failed power supplies to keeping servers backed up and dealing with ransomware. There wasn’t a neat point where the setup was done and we could forget about it.
Programming plus sysadmin experience looked like an infrastructure engineer to recruiters, so that’s what my job titles said for the next decade.
I didn’t mind. I loved the automation side of DevOps and Kubernetes, and DevOps rewards wanting to know everything, from the database to the Linux box to the programs running on it. I’ve always wanted to know everything.
The job titles changed. The hobby didn’t. I kept programming the whole way through, from NestedBird and a hackathon game to a website drawn on a canvas, Sound of Jersey and eventually Kube.ist. The infrastructure years taught me what code does once it’s running for real.