In a strange way, that seems to parallel my own experience.

I originally intended going into chemistry. But I flunked maths at
school (scored lowest grade possible at GCE 'O' level, and managed to
do it 3 times). Consequently, I switched to music (piano), spent 4
years at music college, and then about 10 years working on the edges of
the music industry (including 7 years playing piano in restaurants 5
nights a week). Then for some reason which still escapes me, I bought a
Sinclair QL and realised that I had an aptitude for computers and
programming. (I think the crucial factor was the QL's unbelievably
buggy firmware, and the realisation that I'd either have to figure out
ways round the bugs, or put the thing in the waste bin.) I went back to
university, got an M.Sc. in computer studies, and spent the next 37
years working in IT (10 years looking after IBM mainframes; 10 years
helping to set up, and then managing, the infrastructure of an ISP; 9
years managing about 350 linux workstations, to say nothing of their
users; and 8 years managing mysql databases and servers). 

The abilities to work with computers and to write programs can most
definitely lie buried for a long time.

(Oh, and whilst learning to program, I also signed up for a few months
private tuition and took GCE 'O' level maths again. This time I got a
grade A. The main thing was that I discovered that maths was enjoyable.
I still wonder what would have happened if I'd had a better maths
teacher at school.)

On Tue, 2024-08-27 at 14:11 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> memoryhole--- via Dng said on Mon, 19 Aug 2024 05:28:09 +0200 (CEST)
>
>
> > And then there probably are some others beside myself who aren't
> > even
> > and never were software engineers, code developers, or programmers
> > of
> > any stripe whatsoever but who have attentively followed the
> > conversation with great interest notwithstanding, not only because
> > it
> > is extremely informative and enlightening, but also because the
> > experience and expertise of the discoursers displayed here is a
> > thing
> > of awe to behold.
>
> Hi memoryhole,
>
> Just for fun, I think you should try writing a couple programs. You
> might fall in love with programming.
>
> True story: At 19 or 20 I flunked an assembly language class, at 22 I
> wrote a Fortran program and couldn't get it to run right. At 25 I had
> a
> programmer girlfriend who always got "the call at midnight" on
> Saturday
> night that "her program had crashed", and she had to jump out of bed
> and into her clothes and drive to work just to find out that the
> idiot
> computer operator ran the program wrong, so I vowed NEVER to become a
> programmer.
>
> At 32 I took a microprocessor course because I operated Steve's
> Stereo
> Repair and microprocessors were starting to be used in tapedecks.
> While
> the rest of the class was struggling to add two numbers with their
> class-mandated Heathkit ET6800 Microprocessor Trainer, I used mine to
> play music out of one of the LED segments into an amplifier. It was
> soooo cool to give instructions to a generic machine and have it do
> what you wanted.
>
> The point is, for more than a decade I had no idea I'd like
> programming, and once I really got onto it, I loved it. You never
> know:
> This might happen to you.
>
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
>
> http://444domains.com
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