This piece was inspired by this post by Aaron Boodman.
I remember myself as a calm, quiet kid, happiest when I had a bunch of wires in my hands. My parents used to give them to me as toys along with a screwdriver and an old cassette player I could take apart and try to put back together. I was three years old. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I loved the feeling of exploring the insides of a machine, trying to understand how it works.
In first grade, I was introduced to MS-DOS and Logo with a bit of PASCAL. Later, when the school got better computers, I started writing small programs in BASIC: tic-tac-toe, calculators, that sort of thing. It felt magical.
When I was 10, I finally got my own PC. At first, I mostly used it for games, but after I got internet access, everything changed. I discovered HTML, CSS, and basic JavaScript. This was pre-HTML5, so the web was limited, but I still built a lot of weird and ugly websites. My computer science teacher actually liked them. I even made a bit of money by doing other people’s HTML homework, not just for my classmates, but for my brother’s too.
Around that time, I was really into GTA and discovered MTA and SAMP, community-made mods that added multiplayer to the game. I became obsessed with the idea of running my own server with custom mods and rules. That led me to PAWN, a scripting language used in those mods. I wanted to build a world where we could do almost anything, like in real life. A kind of proto-metaverse.
Eventually, I discovered Second Life — a fully virtual world with its own economy. It had everything I had wanted to build in GTA. I started creating things: clothes, buildings, scripts using LSL (a scripting language that’s a superset of Lua). I even made some money, converting Second Life currency into real-world cash.
But after a while, I realized I didn’t want to create only for a virtual world. I wanted to make something meaningful for people in real life. I was around 16 at the time, still unsure what that could be. What I did know was: I wanted to buy a new computer and a Korg microKORG to make electronic noises. So I launched a tiny “business” reselling ICQ numbers and other digital things on a local white-hat hacker forum. I earned enough to buy what I wanted… and nearly got expelled from school for truancy.
Around then, HTML5 launched, and the web suddenly became powerful again. I created my first homepage with animated JavaScript clouds in the header, layered and moving like in the real sky. I didn’t save the source code, but I still have a screenshot. Around that time I also discovered Bret Victor’s Inventing on Principle, a talk that shaped how I see programming and creativity.
In university, I studied Engineering in Innovation — a mix of semi-technical and business-oriented classes. My favorite courses were Engineering Graphics (lots of CAD), Computer Security (where I once “hacked” the university’s SMTP server — not because I was clever, but because it was ridiculously easy), and Philosophy, which taught me the value of asking right questions, and of creating a personal philosophy as well.
After graduation, I was lost. I didn’t know what I wanted. Luckily, a friend invited me to join a startup — MipoTheBot, a Slack bot for freelancers using platforms like Upwork. I worked on design, UI/UX, and started writing code again. That’s where my professional career began. We shut it down eventually, because we didn’t understand sales or marketing well enough. But I learned an important lesson: those things matter.
In the years that followed, I built a lot across different industries. Most importantly, I discovered that great products come from small, curious and tight-knit teams where everyone owns the outcome together.
What stayed with me most from Aaron Boodman’s post was what he wrote about burnout. Like him, I’ve gone through it. Twice, in fact. My most recent episode wasn’t work-related but came from personal life changes. I took a month off to recover and visit friends across Europe, and when I came back, I had a renewed desire to build. That break reminded me that I still love programming. It has never been just a job for me.
The beauty of programming, for me, is that there’s always a new frontier to explore. Ops, backend, frontend, hardware, and systems programming — each one pulls me in a different direction. Within each of those areas, there are even more rabbit holes: web performance, local-first software, distributed systems, crypto, decentralization, AI, design engineering, and so on.
Sometimes the hardest part is maintaining focus and not chasing every shiny new thing.
For me, programming has always been more than a skill. It’s a way to explore, to tinker, and to satisfy curiosity. From wires and screwdrivers to apps, the tools have changed. But the impulse remains. That’s why I keep coming back to it. It’s my natural way of interacting with the world.
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