How I Started Programming

# It’s 1999.

I’m 9 years old and am obssessed with the idea of making my own games. Specifically, 3D games that I can play on the TV in the living room. It was a lofty dream, but it felt possible! I was already familar with computers, thanks to my grandfather. He was a programmer who not only taught me how to use MS-DOS and Windows, but had even let me assist him with some basic coding tasks in Borland Delphi.

I wasn’t sure where to start, until I somehow managed to procure a copy of a game engine from Germany. It was called 3D Game Studio A4.

It’s got 3D right in the name! I was so excited and quickly started trying to figure out how to build something, anything. Every chance I got on the computer for the next 9 months was spent learning the editor and the bizarre offshoot of C that it used for scripting.

# It was a painful process

To absolutely no one’s surprise, a 9 year old kid trying to learn an obscure, “lowish-level” programming language with a manual in German did not get very far. Discouraged, I eventually found RPG Maker 2000 and started trying to make some simple games with it. This gave me a sandbox to learn logic and problem solving without the having to worry about the complexities of a full programming language.

But I quickly became bored with the limitations of RPG Maker and wanted to be able to break out of the very specific mold it put me in. At this point, my interest in programming was beginning to wane.

# Flash forward a bit

Sometime later, I was at a friend’s house and he showed me a video of Stick Figures doing martial arts. For whatever reason, this was my new obssession and learning Macromedia Flash¹ was priority number 1. Thanks to Flash, I began to dive back into programming with ActionScript.

Now I had a new problem. How do I share my creation with other people? At this point I decided I needed a website of my own. I started learning some HTML and cobbled together a site composed almost entirely of tables².

# Developing into a web community

At this point I was starting to connect with other Flash artists and animators³ via AIM. There was a growing trend with these Flash sites that focused on operating like a small studio. The ability to allow the studio’s artists to easily upload their own videos and make announcements was becoming important to add their content to your site.

I wound up learning PHP as I was able to find some “open source” projects on sites like HotScripts that I could use as a starting point. This would eventually give me the skills necessary to maintain a collection of “studio” websites (including my own) on a heavily modified version of a popular free PHP bulletin board.

Looking back, the funniest part to me is how I was just interested in having visitors for the sake of having visitors. I had no idea how to monetize traffic, or that making money off a website was even a thing! I just wanted to create my cringey animations and share them with an audience.

# Moving away from Flash and into… MySpace

As I got older, I started to lose interest in Flash animations. I was around 16 and focused more on learning how to play guitar. Most of my time on the computer by this point was just making music, maintaining a blog, and creating custom MySpace pages for bands I was friends with.

I had continued to dabble in a few other langauges, like C++, but didn’t invest the time to go deep enough to try building a game or anything substantial.

I should note that around this time I was working, but not as a programmer. I didn’t have a computer science degree and figured noone would hire me to do that. Instead I had a job working as a low voltage electrician - or at least I did, until I was laid off in 2008 during the economic downturn.

# No career and getting married

Moving further along the timeline, I’m 21 and I’ve been doing whatever odd jobs I can find. My latest “opportunity” is working the holiday season at Brookestone. A big part of my job was kicking people out of the massage chairs when they’d been in them too long.

A young guy is sitting in one of the chairs and I tell him he’s gotta go. He tells me that he’s considering buying the chair, but this guy looks younger than me. I ask him what he does for a living and he tells me he’s a web developer.

Okay, interesting…

We continue to talk and he tells me that he learned to code thanks to a friend of his. Turns out, his friend was a kid from my church that I had helped start coding when I was 16!

With this connection made, he tells me that he’s planning on leaving his current contract position and offers to connect me with the staffing agent he’d been working with. I take him up on the offer, and the agent let’s me know that they’ll have a position open in May, right around my wedding date.

# My first real job in tech

It’s the day after I got back from my honeymoon, and I’m doing a take-home coding test from the company I was being considered for. The day after that, I was called down to their office in Seattle for the in-person interview. About an hour later, I was officially hired as a contractor for Sesame Communications.

During this time, I also started doing online school through Full Sail University with hopes of becoming a game developer. I can tell you that being newly married, working full-time, and doing online school is not a recipe for success.

Ultimately, I was unable to complete my degree as I found out halfway through that I would need to take out another loan for the second half of the program. I was unable to do so and had to drop out.

I remained at that job⁴ until 2013, when I would go on to briefly work for a small startup, before trying to start my own freelance business. While my freelance business didn’t find much success, I would have a much different experience as co-founder of Helpful Human later that same year⁵.

# Getting back to games

I worked at Helpful Human for nearly a decade and during that time I was exposed to all manner of tools, languages, and technologies. I also learned how to manage a team, run projects, and work with clients.

But my interest in client work was diminishing… I was now more interested in chasing my childhood dream that got me trying to write code in the first place. I resigned from Helpful Human in 2020 to pursue my deeper interests and founded Catalyst Softworks.