This is a great article, and I also found myself shuddering to think what would happen if the world ever saw the first program I ever wrote (whatever that was).
Even the horrible crap I wrote as an novice is probably less embarrassing to me that the stuff I wrote as a journeyman who shoulda known better.
Thankfully, the most embarrassing things are, like, spending 2 days configuring postfix and not realizing that I could just read the log files and it tells me specifically what isn't working. A valuable lesson, but embarrassment has its cost.
Discovering that I could write my own programs with debug.com was earth shaking. Picked up some decade old book on it at Half Price Books (which went well with my decade old machine -- an 80s model IBM with integrated monochrome green screen) and never looked back.
Yes! I remember my first experience with a PC in the 80s was with a Robotron 8086 PC. It did emanate a smell and I could hear interesting mechanical sounds from inside. The motherboard was huge and it had a small 14 inch monochrome green monitor on top of it.
The first assembly program I wrote and got paid a handsome sum for:
jmp FFF0
The client was amazed that I'd figured out a way to automate the ctrl-alt-del monkeys that had been hired to reboot everyones machines, for some reason, every night ..
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
Even the horrible crap I wrote as an novice is probably less embarrassing to me that the stuff I wrote as a journeyman who shoulda known better.
Thankfully, the most embarrassing things are, like, spending 2 days configuring postfix and not realizing that I could just read the log files and it tells me specifically what isn't working. A valuable lesson, but embarrassment has its cost.