[ciaron]

I started out with a Dragon 32 at around age 14, typing in programs from computer magazines. When I went to university (in 1989), I studied Aeronautical Engineering, which had no computer science or programming at all. I chose a final year project to write a propeller performance tool in Pascal. When I look back at it, I realise what an awful program it was. I was just learning as I went along.

After the engineering degree, I did a "conversion" Masters degree in computer science, though it was rather theoretical and placed great emphasis on formal methods, the management of software projects and being able to write essays comparing OO with non-OO programming. Most of the practical IT/CS skills I got from that time were through my part-time job on the university's computer services help desk.

My current skill set is almost entirely unrelated to my CS degree - I taught myself Python, learned C and my way around Linux through pair-programming with a colleague.

I'm still teaching myself - functional programming in Haskell, using web frameworks to do some nice webapps, and dipping into new languages and technologies that get mentioned on HN and other places.

So I guess that I'm a programmer in spite of my CS degree rather than because of it. I love what I do, so much that it rarely feels like a real job. I'm very lucky.