I've been mucking about with computers for over 20 years, starting with the Commodore Pet. I refuse to categorise it as a hobby or a career. I have been paid for doing it, though not very often at the moment. I do it because I enjoy it - same reason for most things I do, like electronics design and fault finding, mechanics, landscape photography, keeping pigeons as pets, hand-rearing and looking after abandoned/sick pigeons, reading (technical literature, science, novels, SF, history, Bible). Some of these occasionally bring me money, but all of them give non-financial rewards.
Most of it is self-taught. I did one year of a CS degree, but found it largely irrelevant to real-world programming, and most of what was relevant I knew already. Feedback from others who did the whole three years indicated that my one year was representative. I chose Linux because it is open-source, bullshit-free, console-driven, has lots of development tools, allows good freedom of access to the computer's resources, and helps pick the mortar from between the bricks of Babylon. I chose Debian because in the spectrum from breadhead distros to hacker's distros, it is right up at the hacker's end. From what I have seen of the sort of problems people have with other Linuxes, I think it was the right choice, and have not been tempted to try any other. Pigeon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
