In November, 2000
Irv Shapiro, the CEO of Edventions, took me aside and let me know it was time for me to learn to program. The company was tightening its belt and starship.com was being de-prioritized. But, if I could get up-to-speed on Perl, I could make myself useful. He left a dog-eared copy of a book with a Camel on it on my desk, and walked away.
I grasped the magnitude of the opportunity, so the Camel Book was my constant companion for the next few weeks. I took notes as I read it, writing down strange-sounding concepts such as scalars and de-referencing. It was definitely over my head, but some of it sunk in. Then I looked around for a more newbie-friendly book, something that would help me learn something called CGI, which apparently is a program that sits behind web forms. I found Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web. I still remember stealing moments to read that book. Huddled in my snow-covered car outside my aunt-in-law’s apartment building, greedily digesting the knowledge I was so hungry for, finally available to me in the right-sized chunks. That little book got me over the hump.
Later that month, I showed Irv my first CGI program, running on one of our Linux severs. He then gave me a pet project to solve. I had to search a big text file based on a bunch of different criteria submitted from a form, and display the results. I attacked the problem, and later that day, showed him my solution. He wasn’t expecting me so soon, and apparently he was impressed. He called over our CTO, Steve Bunes to have a look. Steve was apparently pleased with what he saw and casually mentioned that we should get me involved with the development team.
I was happy and excited about what might happen next.
[This year, I’m blogging the year 2000, the year I started programming.]
