I'm one of those who were probably deaf to the call of computing until very late :o)

I had absolutely no idea until about 6 years ago, that I wanted to have anything to do with computers... Well, I had lots of other career plans at that time.. I was in pre-med (well, the equivalent of pre-med in my country). and preparing for exams that would take me to med school... well, suddenly, I realized that *this* was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.. not to disparage the medical profession in any way, but I knew that sort of job wasn't for me...

But at that time, I honestly didn't know what else to do... I loved Chemistry, so maybe that ? well, I wasn't sure.. then, while I was making up my mind, I got this job as an accounts assistant.. until then my only use for computers were to play chess.. I played a lot of chess at that time.. but now I was exposed to more of the computers abilities... ok, it was only spreadsheets and word processing, but I had never really imagined computers as being (*I laugh when I think of this*) quite so useful...

As would befit a person who only used BBC-BASIC computers to play chess, I had nary a clue as to how to "operate" this thing... it all seemed like voodoo to me..

In a way, I suppose it was that feeling that I didn't know enough about it that prompted me to save up money from the job, and enroll for a programming course.. (what better way to learn about a computer than programming, eh ? :o) I cast around for a language to learn, and then a friend told me that there was this cute language called C, which was pretty useful to him, so maybe I should learn it..I did, I loved every minute of it, although the first few days were incredibly hard..Once I got over my initial phobia/ignorance of computers, the rest seemed to naturally fall into place for me...

When I had to make a decision about retaking my exams, I knew what I wanted to do... so I got into a CS/IS degree stream... lots (in fact, almost everyone I knew at the time) told me I was crazy... that there was nothing better than being in med-school, but I knew this was what I wanted to do....

When I was at university, things seemed to fall into place too... What I was doing didn't seem like "study", because I liked it so much...I still want to be very good at what I do, so the learning has never stopped, but I flatter myself by thinking that I bring a relatively newbie perspective to computing, because I haven't been in it for very long...

Sometimes though, I actually do wonder... what would I be doing if I hadn't taken that programming course... or if I hadn't enrolled in that degree.. ? I don't know. but I do know I wouldn't swap places with anyone else...