

Ask HN: Most Influential Experience? - lukeqsee

I know for a lot of people one experience, class, or person had such a profound effect that it radically changed their life's path or a significant part of it.<p>What was yours?<p>Here's mine: a programmer was willing to teach my home school co-op group programming. Before I took that class I wanted to "build" computers. (Basically, I wanted to be a tech.) Afterwards, I am looking at a career in programming. (Which, as you know, has a gigantically larger potential.) I doubt I'd be programming if it wasn't for that class.
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waivej
Mine was spending four days straight building a MS Windows style environment
in x86 assembler. The assignment was Conway's Game of Life so I went a little
overboard. It lead to a research job on parallel computers, access to amazing
computer labs, a project for The Rolling Stones, and probably my first
programming job. Thanks to friends that brought me food during the effort.

A close second was when my dad brought home an XT computer and Pascal books.

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petercooper
I don't think it was profound but it totally changed the course of my life.
Quitting college a week before it started to take a Web development job (in
1998). I was off to take law and math, so most likely would have gone to
university and done "other things" had I not been lured away by the dot com
era. I couldn't say whether it was for the better or not, though, especially
as I'm now finally heading back to do a math degree..

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fezzl
I got a full scholarship to study at high school in another country when I was
fifteen. Total paradigm shift after that. Second paradigm shift came when I
worked for a startup for the first time when I was nineteen, even before
knowing that there was this thing called "startups."

