At the age of 14 I started programming. It was the best decision of my life. At the age of 21, after creating one of Sweden’s first programs for running a business, I stopped.
Until today, I’ve had my doubts about the decision to stop programming. I know exactly the reason why I stopped at the time. I saw myself staring into a terminal for the rest of my life and I dreaded it.
So I went to Business School, had the time of my life, and thought that to stop programming had been a blessing. I became a much more sociable person, learned about becoming a more emotionally intelligent person (at least I hope so), and met so many interesting people. My past didn’t matter, because as an adult business had become my passion, so I should make good money in my career.
To give a bit more context to my rationality about quitting programming it hardly existed any job opportunities in the beginning of the 1990’s. Computers that could run any serious programs were very expensive so the small community that needed programmers worked only for really large companies or the government.
Today, and for the past 25 years, the need for programmers has just exploded. Business people are always in demand but in relation to the number of programmers needed I made the worst career choice possible. If I had continued my programming career the last thing I would have thought about was potential shortages of jobs.
So, why am I writing this blog post now? Well, it turns out that I still love programming. This past weekend I’ve started to pick up Python.
Guess what, my old programming skills are still there.
I don’t know anything about the future, however, one thing has become clear; I need programming in my life!
