In 1998, a friend gave me a computer. It was in pieces. I knew nothing about nothing. Within a year, I was communicating over dual telephone lines. Within two years of that, I was a sysadmin at an ISP. This was the year I found Perlmonks. I read a book, 'Perl in 21 days' or some such, and found Perl was what I wanted... a way to automate processes.

Within months, I learned a dangerous amount about MySQL, CGI and Perl to allow any invader to break everything. Thankfully, during that time, everyone was out for themselves, and exploitation hadn't yet become a thing.

By 2009, I'd grown a lot in many areas. No where near perfect in the security arena, but I was becoming proficient on how to interact with the open source world, and how to interact with the CPAN. It was this year that I joined Perlmonks as a member, and became a vocal person, not just a listener.

Now, as some of the old timers will attest to, I always claimed "I'm not a programmer". With that said, I have done much work in fields so closely related to programming, that I have to bend and say that yeah, maybe I can classify as a hacker.

Anyone else around who have claimed "I'm not a programmer", or who has been around since the very early days of Perlmonks who would just like to say "I'm still here!!!"?.

-stevieb

In reply to Who's still around? by stevieb

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