About
Hello, I'm Marcelo, and I started programming by accident almost 20 years ago.
I like to draw since I was a kid. The first thing I learned on a computer was Microsoft Paint; I spent hours drawing Dragon Ball Z characters using a mouse. Results weren't great, so I repeated the process multiple times until I had something that sucked less - I kind of enjoyed this loop, in a very angry and frustrating way.
A few months in and I discovered Photoshop. I was amazed by the tool, and started reading as many tutorials as possible - the Matrix effect, changing the background of photos, coloring hairs. It was way more complex than Paint, and my outputs were very different from the tutorials. That pissed me off a lot, but also made me invest a large amount of time in improving my skills.
Fast-forward to my last year of high-school. During that time, I had to think about what to do with my life, if I would go to a college and all that stuff. I started with a bunch of options, some of them more traditional than others, and I ended up with the idea of becoming a Web Designer. My rationale was not that complex or philosophical: I wanted to make a lot money while doing something I could enjoy. Apart from that, web design was the logical next step for someone with my "background"; I signed up for Internet Systems course to accomplish that goal. Once graduated, I would be a web designer.
The problem with my decision was the gap between my understanding of web design and the college's. I wasn't expecting to study computational logic, databases, or OS internals. I didn't want to quit, so I changed plans and decided to become a programmer*. The main reasons for the change were more opportunities and bigger salaries*.
I wasn't good, though, so a new obsession started: I wanted to be competent in the things I was learning during classes. This didn't work as well as I expected, at least not during the course. All the processes for interns I took selected other people - I was their second option most of the time. As we say in Brazil, the second place is the first loser.*
I finished the course, but didn't get my certificate. Bad decisions along the way made me finish some classes with lower grades than the minimum required, so I would need to take them again in following semesters; I didn't want to do that and moved on with my life.