I was hosting my sites at Angelfire at first but later I setup my own Linux Slackware web server with PHP and MySQL. At first I didn’t quite understand how websites operated and didn’t know about server-side languages so it took me some time to understand that I needed a web server to run websites. I wanted to make web pages so on the first day that I got the computer I started writing in HTML, JavaScript and CSS. When I got my Celeron computer I already had a clear understanding about what I wanted to do. I started with a bunch of languages at once. The computer was running Windows 98 that just had come out. It was a killer machine running a 400Mhz Celeron with 256MB of RAM, 8GB hard drive, a 3D Blaster Banshee 16MB video card, and a 17” 75Hz 1024x768 CRT screen. I finally got my own computer much later though at the age of 15. For those of you who haven’t heard of thinnet, it’s Ethernet over coaxial cable, aka 10BASE2. It also had a thinnet PCMCIA network adapter card and my first home network was 10Mbit/s thinnet. I just tried booting it but it no longer works. It had 8 MB of RAM, 800MB disk, and I dual booted Windows 95 and OpenBSD on it. The IBM Butterfly laptop (ThinkPad 701CS).

Somehow he had a spare laptop and he gave it to me for free. I had a friend called Zombie and he was this amazing sysadmin. I even pretended to be a student at several universities while being just a kid to gain access to the Internet! I made a ton of friends who were interested in computers and used their computers. It took me a while to get a computer and until I did I tried to get access anywhere I could. From then on I was dreaming every day to have my own computer. The first time I sat at a computer I was completely hooked. I’ve been playing with computers since around the age of 6 when I first got access to a 386 or 486 computer at mom’s work. How did you get into software development? Want to help with translation in your language? Email me the full interview.Currently Russian and Chinese translations are available: My friends and blog followers offered to translate the interview in several languages. This is the full interview and has some extra content and pics. I'm making a backup copy of the interview here on catonmat. I've been a lifetime fan of Fog Creek Software and it just feels so great to be interviewed by them.

We talked about how I got into software development, what I currently do, my current setup and my favorite books. I just had my minute of fame! I was just interviewed by Fog Creek on their development blog.

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