Why I Became a Coder

I’ve been thinking about my origin story lately. No vat of toxic waste. No radioactive spider. It wasn’t for the money. When I was dreaming of building the next big thing on my Mac Plus, I had no idea what software engineers were even paid.

The first thing I actually built for pay was at age 14, working for my school district. We were using then-Macromind Director to integrate video, audio, transitional text, and animations for a K-8 summer school program. It wasn’t the pure BASIC code I’d written prior to that on my Commodore 64, but building a tool—any software tool—that others used just felt good.

Still, in school, I thought I was going to be a physicist for a while—nuclear, if you believe my high school photo. I think because I thought that was a “real” job compared to coding. Building software was too much fun. Can you really get paid for that? My actual turning point wasn’t some profound, Oh wait, I love coding, why don’t I just do this? It was sitting in class and thinking, Oh, wait. I’m terrible at calculus. Am I sure I’m in the right field? Followed quickly by, Oh, yeah… software is a degree program.

What hooked me was that I could build something completely with my mind (and fingers). The computer was patient, had no ego, and did what I instructed; sadly, even when my instructions were bad.

Fast forward past decades of actually getting paid to do the fun stuff, and here we are in 2026. I still love the flow of creating—whether I’m typing words, writing code, or collaborating with my AI agent friends. Now, my role is less builder and more facilitator, organizer, babysitter, and a voice of reason. I love serving my team and making sure we deliver.

However, there are times when I miss the joy of pure coding. To scratch that itch lately, I’ve been playing with AI tools like Claude Code and Cursor, learning how to effectively use them to build small side projects. It is an amazing time to be creating.