I have been immersed in computers since the age of 13 when I bought my first Vic 20 and learned assembly language in 3 weeks so I could make my own games! I was poor - didn't have money for games. On the Commodore 64 I was pretty much "the jedi master". Zero page interupts, assembly language, bank switching, game design all by the age of 15.
When I got older... and my C64 was replaced by a PC I didn't have as much time as I used to for programming. Work, life, responsibilities, etc. But, I did write a couple of simple business programs for family before stopping programming for almost 17 years to my utter dismay.
1996'ish - I had surgery on my knee causing me to lose my job at the age of 25. A benign tumor ate away almost all my bone and through sheer luck I got to the Dr before it broke and I had a good chance of losing my leg.
1997'ish - I started a Onsite computer company handing out flyers with my cast still on and my life went all over the place. Because I was in so much pain all the time walking around it made my life difficult. I started getting my life on track and then in 1998'ish I had a recurrence - the tumor came back and back into the hospital I went for a much better surgery this time. They got it all it seems.
Around Feb 2009 I wanted to start programming again. Realized my brain isn't what it used to be. After a few years of depression and other stupid things I did I was having a hard time concentrating and learning all the new stuff since 1992'ish.
I kept at it off and on - I know for a fact if you keep at it - your brain will rewire itself. Around Feb 20, 2010 I started rewritting my website. It was VERY slow going as I was having horrible times concentrating and retaining new information in my 40's. Sometimes one line of code would take me days as I researched things, ways to do it, better ways to do it, sifting through all the tons of crap examples and poor programming habits on the web and sifting through volumes of information I slowly built up my code base, functions, and entire librarys.
Around Dec 30, 2011 I had a major breakthrough. Like a fan in my brain blowing away all the fog. I could now read the PHP docs with incredible clarity. I could write hundreds of lines of code in a few hours while listening to the radio (classical... I still get distracted a bit by music with words).
Around Feb 20, 2012 I had re-written 90% of the new website (3 lousy pages, and about 30 files of PHP, JS, etc).
Why get back into programming after all this time? Well, I thought about that. For the fun. If I never sell any of these products - I had fun! I am a coder. A damn amazing one. I can program anything. I just wish my knowledge was greater. I can't learn fast enough.
My knowledge is exploding and some of you here at Stack Exchange / Stack Overflow have helped me fill in blanks with my knowledge to which this old man is very grateful.
