Notch8

I often tell people that I was raised to be a developer. My dad is a Systems Engineer at NASA, and has worked there in either software or systems my whole life. People hear this and often misconstrue it to mean that Dad pushed me into computers at an early age. That is really not true. He was there to listen, and would answer questions when I asked, but he never said things like "When you grow up you'll make a great programmer".

A few of my friends have been after me lately, asking about how my dad passed on the art of programming to me. The answer is that he didn't... At least not directly. We played games together instead.

When I was a toddler, I would play Star Command with my dad. He would control the star ship and I would press the buttons on the Atari 800 keyboard to bring up the map, change weapons etc. Sneaking up from a nap on Saturday afternoons and hoping Mom didn't catch us is one of my earliest memories. When I got older (Junior high/ High school) we played RPGs like Ultima 7 together. One person would "drive" while the other worked on mapping, high level 'whats next' stuff and such. I learned logic and reasoning this way. I also learned how to draw a mean flow chart... after all that is all the maps from Zork really are.

It occurred to me this morning that this was truly "Pair Video Gaming" Not just two people laying against each other or even cooperative games like MMORPGs, but Pair gaming in the same vain as Pair Programming. The freedom of the non-driver to work ahead on the 'big picture' while the driver focuses on the detail, is exactly the benefits that XP teaches.

So playing games together taught logic and reasoning, taught pair programming, testing and other good techniques, but there is one more aspect of this learning method had over "Heres a programming book son, let me know when you've finished it". We spent time together. That is huge, so I'll say it again. Even as a teenager I spent a lot of time hanging out with my dad. I think like a computer programmer not just because I am one or because I was raised by one, but because I was mentored and befriended by one from a very early age. I tackle problems by picking them apart into little tasks and solving each task one by one, because I saw proof over and over again that it could be done that way.

When it came time for me to put in college apps, my dad, very proud that I had chosen Computer Science, sat me down. He wanted to be very certain that I knew, if CS didn't make me happy, that I should find whatever vocation does and do that instead.

It wasn't pressure or sneaking CS books on my book shelf or any of that kind of thing. It was being willing to help when I asked for it, to spend time with me. Sure, I'm probably one of the few people who at 25 has a well thumbed first addition Kernighan and Ritchie, but that was because I asked to borrow it and was told I could have it.