Talking to Computers

Talking to Computers

Steve Bissett
1 min read

I wrote my first line of code at age 11 in 2001 on a computer that a friend had brought to school, his brother worked in the USA for Microsoft at the time. This was a year after I first ran a Google search for the first time.

The application was a small chatbot that would echo back greetings. It was the spark that got me started getting computers to build things. An engrossing competence-reward loop that eventually led me into the tech industry and a career I love. 

Since then, I've been through the process of learning Java, C++, Python, SQL, HTML, C#, Ruby, Javascript, Elixir, Typescript. A technical polyglot bilingual. 

24 years, and 13 professional years later, it feels like a full circle moment, where all of that has culminated in speaking and writing .... English. 

And back to where it all started, talking to computers in a CLI. 

The world is never going to be the same. 

AI is both a threat and an opportunity. It's exciting, uncertain, and daunting, but again and again... Change is the only constant. 

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