[wilhow]

I'm not entirely sure I count myself as a successful programmer. I did build a couple payroll systems that was in place for about a decade. Built a web UI for AS400 back in 99. I started this whole journey from Photoshop 4.5 and it kinda snowballed from there.

What drove my "success" was a passion and curiosity. What I could do, tinker, and learn in the programming world was endless. I lived,breath, and sh!t JAVA, C++, VB, COBOL, js, HTML, etc, etc for about five years. My first year I camped in my cube, going back to my apt only for shower, and I wasn't even paid well for it. I made less than 30K/year.

Now I'm a SE in a DevOps/EDR company.I still code on the side for fun, but it's not a major focus of my job.