I got started in tech when I found a book about making your own computer games in my elementary school library. It was a little old even then: we had a 486 running DOS 6 and the book was, I would guess, 10 years old. It detailed how to save your work to what appeared to be an audio cassette and I'm quite sure it wasn't written in a DOS-dominated world! I figured out how to use QBasic and I started building things from what I had learned in the book. My Dad (mainframe engineer) and older brothers (who had done it in high school) saw, and started chiming in with tips and help, and showing me new things that weren't in the book. I got Turbo C++ for my 12th birthday, and in high school we finally got the Internet, I discovered forums, and Java and PHP and many others, and the rest is history. I got a job in tech out of high school and paid for college in a few years.
I had tried to get into Linux all through high school but my family was completely unsupportive of that (still are, weirdly). I bought an old machine (wiped) and a book about Mandrake Linux at a garage sale, but I couldn't figure out how to get Linux on there. I had a copy of Fedora on CD, but didn't know enough to get a CD drive working successfully. I tried Linux From Scratch on floppy disks, and the PDF was an interesting read, but I never got that computer very far. When I could afford my own laptop I had a problem within weeks and Microsoft support managed to brick the system remotely. I decided to go all-in. I spent a few weeks trying various free *nixes. Ubuntu was brand new, but it worked well enough to get me to never go back (though I have often explored BSDs and other distros). By my senior year I was working exclusively on back-end Linux stuff. Now I would say I have an exceptionally successful career and I haven't touched a proprietary OS in 9 years!
I had tried to get into Linux all through high school but my family was completely unsupportive of that (still are, weirdly). I bought an old machine (wiped) and a book about Mandrake Linux at a garage sale, but I couldn't figure out how to get Linux on there. I had a copy of Fedora on CD, but didn't know enough to get a CD drive working successfully. I tried Linux From Scratch on floppy disks, and the PDF was an interesting read, but I never got that computer very far. When I could afford my own laptop I had a problem within weeks and Microsoft support managed to brick the system remotely. I decided to go all-in. I spent a few weeks trying various free *nixes. Ubuntu was brand new, but it worked well enough to get me to never go back (though I have often explored BSDs and other distros). By my senior year I was working exclusively on back-end Linux stuff. Now I would say I have an exceptionally successful career and I haven't touched a proprietary OS in 9 years!