I was lost, literally, hitchhiking across the Australian outback when this article was published. Going home felt scary because I was afraid to be alone with no one else sharing my interests. Travelling made life enjoyable again because just surviving felt like an achievement. But I felt so, so isolated (again, literally!) from modern society. I wanted to find out why I was so deeply interested in computers but not in “tech”. They must work somehow… why did my iPhone (sold that) feel similar to my PC (sold that too) but only one is called a computer? This article framed things in a way that shook me out of a physically dangerous, homeless, jobless rut. It was all code. And I could learn it if I had the time.

Perhaps it was the way it was written; I couldn’t believe intrigue and passion of computing could be weaved together like this. But there it was.

I did make it home eventually. Fortunately the first 2000km lift back from western Australia to the eastern states with a crystal meth addict on the run from the police didn’t end violently. A few weeks back in Sydney with family some Linux nerds found me working as a receptionist answering phones and scanning paper records in at a failing medical practice. They got me doing desktop Windows and Linux server support. I’m an official software engineer now. I guess I should print this article out to show to my kids!