I just finished reading Me Talk Pretty One Day.  It was an interesting book.  He made it seem like sitting down and listening to someone's stories, the kind you would't really care to actually hear, but that might end up weird or interesting.  Although some of his stories are genuinely interesting, it amazes me how much money can be made off of writing down random-ass stories and collecting them in a book.  The first 150 pages were a lot more interesting than the last 70, just like someone's stories get more boring as they use up all their good ones.  He does a good job with most of the stories, though.  But anyway, the point is, it put me in the mood to write down pointless random-ass self-indulgent stories of my own.  Yeah, I'm narcissistic.  And I'm probably going to do more.  It's a boring read.  Seriously.

Changing Focus

Ever since I can remember, my parents always tried to push me into their respective ideals of the perfect son.  My dad always pushed me towards science and math.  My mom always tried to push me toward being normal. I tended more toward science.  My parents always seemed to be proud of me back then. I found most everything to be pretty easy, and found myself bored and lonely enough (being both an only child and relatively unpopular at school) that I actually ended up learning C++ in my free time at the age of 11.  I had already become an avid console gamer at the time, having a Nintendo, Super Nintendo, SEGA Genesis, and even an Atari 2600 (which apparently belonged to my dad before I was born), and I became enamored with the idea of designing video games, of making my own!

I went to my dad's bookshelf, and found a book on C++.  After several weeks of struggling with the material, my dad informed me that I was, in fact, reading a book aimed at programmers who know C, and are learning C++ as a superset of C.  He then gave me a book on C.  After a few weeks, I decided that I needed a new book, and proceeded to learn on my own.  I learned slowly and intermittently, and often having to relearn everything I had learned before; however, I did manage to write my own video games after a while.  I remember writing a few when I was 13, including a DirectX pong clone, and a few DOS pong clones and a decent start of a shooter, and of course, all of them in C++.  

I know I mention C++ a lot.  That's mainly because I'm a nerd.  Basically, for those that care (and anyone that doesn't, by all means skip to the next paragraph), I have a big problem with the direction software development is going in.  I don't like the black box architectures offered by the likes of java or C#, and it annoys me that I have to work with them.  In my job, almost all my programs involve converting custom data to other formats of custom data.  I absolutely hate not being able to access the data directly, and that's exactly what java and C# and most all of the languages that have come out in recent years have gravitated toward.  Yes, I realize that my case may not be representative of the majority of programming tasks, but it doesn't change the fact that I get pissed off every time I have to write 200 lines of C# code when I could have written 40 lines of C++ code to do the same job, faster.

Around the ninth grade, my interest in making video games had waned.  Video games had come a long way since I was 11.  The new video games that were coming out seemed to signal an end to the video game arena that I was so eager to join.  3D graphics and multi-hundred-thousand-dollar budgets would become a requisite by the time I was competent enough to join the "industry."  The days of the lone programmer sitting in his basement, coming up with the next hit game all by himself, were no plausible.  I'll grant that the games now are far superior on the technical aspect...  But video games in general sort of lost their charm after that, at least to me.  Given my nerdly skill set and my disillusionment with my motive for developing said skill set, I began to look into manners in which I could abuse what I know. 

I came upon the hacker culture.  I really liked the idea of breaking into computers.  It really appealed to me for some reason.  I read for hours and hours on how different exploits work.  I attended hacker conventions (consequently being the first time I had ever actually been completely drunk).  Although I was very interested in how the exploits worked, I never seemed to care to actually use them.  The only thing I really did as far as "hacking" goes was to disable the security on the school computers, and to put backoriface on the computer teacher's computer.  Although most of it was "script kiddyish" in nature, some of the stuff was relatively complicated (and undocumented), particularly the flavor of security they had on it (it blocked out most everything, including all but authorized executables).  I was too paranoid to do anything that might actually land me in jail...  At least when it came to the computer.

When I started college, I was somewhat pissed off that I was forced to take Beginning Programming.  I didn't want to learn Pascal, and I thought it was a waste of time.  And I had no problem saying so in class.  I was a complete ass, but I didn't realize it.  I just knew I didn't like Pascal, and by extension I didn't like the person trying to teach it to me.  I always went too far with everything like that.  I developed it as a social script to try to appear extroverted, and I don't realize the way I act when I do it.  Thus I end up offending mass numbers of people without even realizing it, some to the point of causing people to avoid class because of me.  But that's aside from the point.  When I took Programming I, my professor hated me, and the feeling was mutual.  Why did she hate me?  Because I didn't need her class.  She was pissed off that I got A's on all her tests but I never came to class.  But that's not why I hated her; actually, I kind of enjoyed it when she sneered at me and handed me my paper with "99%" written on it.  No, the reason I hated her was the documentation she required for the programming assignments.  In the real world, programmers only document places that need to be documented.  She wanted 3 paragraphs of comments to describe the purpose and design of the program, along with a paragraph for each function.  I once wrote my summary of the program in Biblical form, just to see if she noticed.  When I received my graded printout, however, I saw nothing but the standard red check mark.  It amazed me how she could miss things like "On the first day, The Programmer created main(), and he saw that it was good" could go completely unnoticed, particularly when highlighted with asterisks...  Then again, perhaps she did notice, and simply didn't respond.  I doubt it though...  She was quite religious, and made that clear in class every chance she got.  If she had actually read it, I doubt it would go unheard in the classroom, much less on paper.

In my sophomore year I took an Introduction to Philosophy class.  After the frustration and boredom of my CS classes, I had finally found a place where people had interesting things to talk about.  On top of that, this was a place where you might actually be able to raise your grade if you could produce a decent argument for raising said grade.  I began to shift my focus towards philosophy, much to the dismay of my parents. 

My dad told me once when I was 12 that when I go to college, I better not get a liberal arts degree.  "The hell if I'm gonna pay for a degree in philosophy!"  He told me.  And that generally sums up his opinion of philosophy.  So, given his extreme bias towards science, and his extreme hatred of all things philosophical, it was quite a shock to him to learn that his only son had lost interest in programming as a career and was planning to pursue philosophy instead.  He and I speak on somewhat hostile grounds now because of it. My dad, a hardcore Republican, always assumed that, since I'm interested in philosophy, I must be a "liberal", and of course that liberals are by their very nature evil, wicked creatures.  I'm no liberal,  nor am I a conservative; I tried to tell him this, but he just never seemed to get it.  I suppose I also argued with him a lot...  I can't help it, I like to argue.