Ever since he was a kid, Conrad was the smartest kid in the room, but still played well with others. He grew up with a slide rule hanging on his belt, but mostly today it’s all about programming, from T-SQL to .NET, and he applies his wide experiences to solving business problems for his clients. A differentiator for Conrad, the developer? “I can understand what he is talking about, “ said one client. Huge.

by Conrad, the independent software developer

So, how did I decide to become a programmer? I had moved from Kansas to San Francisco two years earlier, was working with emotionally disturbed children in the City, and had just met this beautiful woman with a one-year old child. It was clear that we were moving toward marriage and I wasn’t going to be much of a provider at $1,200/mo. So, I decided to learn how to “do computers” because I thought computers would be interesting. That may sound flakey, but, as you will see, I was ready to roll the dice. At 31, you’re almost always ready to roll the dice.

Background: My experience with computers and computing was my typing class in high school (thank God I took that!). Oh, and I had actually computed a square root at a terminal while in college. Primitive? You bet. This was 1981 after all. So what right did I have to think I could pull this off? Well, I had started out as a physics major in college and my balls still had a lot of brass. Oh, and I should mention that I had been a Junior High Science teacher. That will be important pretty soon.

How did I launch it? I told my wife-to-be that I was going to give this a shot and she thought that was cool. She figured I wouldn’t end up much under $1,200/mo., so why not? So, I looked in the paper and Radio Shack was advertising for someone to teach others how to program. So, I took the ad, went to the Radio Shack Computer Center at One Market Plaza and told them I wanted the job. They were impressed that I had been a public school teacher. Then I sold the manager by looking him squarely in the eye without a doubt in my mind when he asked, “Can you be ready to teach people how to program in one and one-half weeks?” and told him, “Yes, I can.” …pause and think about that for a second…something I did not do. After all, I’d had a typing class and I was good with math. I figured those were the most relevant qualifications for programming. Oddly enough, turns out I wasn’t that far off.

How did it go? Well, use your imagination. I’d never sat at a computer at all and honestly had no idea what a program was. This is a disk? Why is it called a floppy disk? Magnetically encoded, huh? I felt like I couldn’t find my butt with a map! RAM? Well, this is what the salesman told me it was… The salesmen were my main source of information. There was no big bookstore section on this back then and it wasn’t their fault the sales staff fit the old joke:

Q: What is the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman?
A: The car salesman knows he’s lying to you!

How much did I know about the subjects I was teaching? What day of the week was it and what time of day? But you know what? I had a lot of students who seemed happy – and put that on the evaluations – by the end of the first class. I really worked at it, told them what I didn’t know and found it out for them, and never lied to them on purpose!

A couple of months pass…then a student asks me to write a program for him on the side…sure, why not?…