[0xfai]

Yeah. Small town kid with undiagnosed brain problems with a 1997 $150,000 salary. I'd never had more than a few hundred dollars to my name before. For sure my life would be very different but it's pretty hard to say what would have happened to me.... but it probably would have been a dangerous mess knowing the route I've had to take through the world to get to some self awareness. It's fun to think about though.

I'll have to ask my mom. We really haven't spoken about it since. I wouldn't be surprised if she completely forgot that happened. My memory from that time.... there was so much going on for me and not much of it good... yeah. My memory is spotty. I'll have to ask her and get the adult version of how that affected them. I guess I did get in front of a judge and became an emancipated minor that year and sold my first PHP contract. I think that was the result? What a stupid life.

[johntiger1]

Was just about to ask about emancipation. By the way, what was the interview like in 1997? No leetcode I'm assuming...

[0xfai]

At that time if you could upload PHP code to an FTP and it connected to a mySQL database you were a pretty rare animal. I mean, this is not long after PHP became a thing at all. Most important stuff was Java or Perl out there on the web. I also was very handy with photoshop, HTML, and cut up and layout. I've always kind of been visual first. I don't think I became a "good" programmer until I was in my late 20s but I've always had a bit of an edge in that I have natural design instincts and an inability to fully recognize that I can't do something.

Anyway, it was pretty easy to demonstrate that I had the chops for what they were looking for by showing them my websites on the internet and talking about my code. The insane treadmill of javascript frameworks was still a decade away. I still can't white board code any algorithms but to quote Rasmus Lerdorf (creator of PHP) "Yes, I am a terrible coder, but I am probably still better than you :)"

I know in our current culture this experience I'm describing could be seen as a good thing or some sort of mythmaking. It's not. It's a failure of the school and social system to take care of a distressed gifted kid.

EDIT: I just remembered that I started with Macromedia Flash before I got into PHP. I didn't understand what vector art was though so I made stuff with Paint Shop Pro and when things scaled they would be all jaggy. Lol. I think that was the real bullet for Neopets. That not only could I post a form to a database but I had flash chops... Wow. I have not thought about how much time I spent working in flash in a looooong time. I should see if I can find any of those works in my archives. I can only half remember two animations. I bet there is some fun stuff.