Leaving aside my first programming experiences as a kid, banging out AppleTalk BASIC on my Apple IIGS, the first time I started any serious computer programming was in C and C++ as part of the electrical engineering curriculum in college, before I had the realization that I was destined to program computers for a living. For the record, all I remember from electrical engineering is that V=IR, P=IV, and everything else that is important can be essentially derived using calculus.

In order to complete our programming assignments in school, we would access a university server using SSH (or yikes, could it have been telnet?), type our programs in vi, emacs, or pico, and then compile them with gcc.

I loved programming but I absolutely hated that. I have never been any good at vi; I struggle to remember how to tell it I want to quit. I was okay with pico, but I seem to remember spending more time on one assignment figuring out how to set up an FTP file sync (so that...