How my passion developed

Below is the timeline of my engineering journey.

I was born in 1982 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and I have been passionate about software engineering and building software products for as long as I can remember.

1980s - Baby steps in the Computer World

In the late 80s I got my first computer, an IBM XT. It only had MS-DOS and a dozen of games written in Basic taken from Computer Magazines at the time. A couple of years later, Windows 3.11 was launched and I got an IBM PC with 286 processor.

1990s - First Software Engineering Steps

1992: Software Programming

I started studying software programming in 1992 (at 10) because I wanted to automate and simplify some basic tasks. I started by coding in QBasic softwares to help keep score of card games and foosball as well as generate statistics (eg: which foosman each player used more to score). I then studied and developed softwares in Visual Basic, Delphi, C ANSI, C++, Assembly and PHP before starting Computer Engineering at PUC University in Rio (University ranked 2nd in Brazil at the time).

1994: BBS, Internet and first website

The need to communicate and exchange files gave birth to BBSs which also allowed an internet connection to follow.

Around 1996 I started developing my first website (twg.com.br) that can still be found in its latest version on Internet Archive cached on 1998. It was a mix of internet directory, search engine and other interesting things at that time.

1996: Linux Journey

After experimenting with Minix I ordered (yep, ordered, impossible to download at the time) my first Linux distribution, a Slackware 3.0.

  • 1 month - wait time for order delivery
  • 1 month - 24/7 on IRC channels trying to figure out how to setup Minicom to use the modem to connect to the internet (remember those awful strings?). At that time Linux users on IRC channels did not respond to users not using BitchX as IRC client  (to my disappointment)
  • a couple of months later - bye bye Windows (sorry Bill !). Then came RedHat, Fedora, CentOS, Mint, Ubuntu, Arch, Alpine and so on, up until MacOS.

2000 - University - Compunter Engineering

I decided to stop coding and tried to focus on university, but within a year (and even after completing my degree), I realised that I had made a very bad decision. I concluded that Computer Engineering helps you improve 3 things:

  • Discipline;
  • Learning;
  • Focus.

This is because we learn to spend days of uninterrupted hours studying advanced Math and Physics.

What knowledge College does not improve:

  • Coding Skills;
  • System Architecture;
  • Software Design;
  • Product Management.

Only a Scientific Initiation Scholarship on developing better Telecom Networks by coding a software for studying and simulating various scenarios could keep me sane.

2002 - Entrepreneurial Journey Started

I created a separate page in order to recount my experiences and, most importantly, the lessons learned. Please follow the link below to find out more.

Endeavors and Lessons Learned