Starting on the Commodore 64 in 1986, my computer travels have taken me through the world of IBM XTs (and DOS 3.3), Windows (3.1, 95/98, XP, 7), and Linux. I started using, and administering, Linux machines in 1999, but had fallen in love with the Open Source ecosystem a few years earlier, having learned Perl and written a small web site backed by mSQL (no, not MySQL, mSQL), and discovered how to use MySQL as the back-end of a MS Access 97 application.

Over the next several years, I acquainted myself with variety of Open Source projects, such as Apache, Subversion, MySQL, and Bacula in my jobs as programmer and system administrator.

I (finally) learned Python in 2006, and wished I had picked it up years earlier. With its object orientation, hierarchical layout of modules, and pass-by-reference-ish calling convention, it is a language that just “fits my brain” and fits it well. I’ve am considerably more productive in Python than I was using Perl. Not that Perl is a bad language; Python just fits my brain better. I’ve since been “forced” to learn PHP to maintain some company applications, and it has lead me to appreciate Python’s design even more.

I’ve continued to find jobs that are a mix of system administration and programmer. I find the mix fits me well, and keeps the job from getting boring. I was working in “DevOps” before the term was invented.

I love all things automation!