Early Programming: Typing BASIC and First Projects

Romanian communist-era Felix HC91 computer with Z80 processor and 64KB RAM, learning programming through Basic and cassette tape storage, attending specialized informatics high school class in northern Romania, teachers from former communist computing center, learning Pascal and building word-guessing game for graduation project, pressure and competitiveness in academic environment, entering Cluj-Napoca Technical University computer science program as second-ranked student, studying in English-taught program, learning Java through Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java book, working as Java developer during university using German method names for Frankfurt-based company, using Struts framework with Hibernate and JSPs for web development, joining Betfair.com as early employee in Romanian office, founding Transylvania Java User Group in 2008 with iconic Dracula-themed Duke logo, organizing 60+ meetups with 120-150 regular attendees, receiving support from international JUG leaders like Antonio Gonçalves and Michael Hüttermann, transitioning to engineering leadership roles, working at various companies including Uber Amsterdam managing cash payment systems, health tech startup using PHP, Catawiki marketplace using Ruby on Rails, currently working at AWS on CodeBuild and CodePipeline, discussing need for corretto 25 support in AWS services, importance of Java LTS versions for developers

Gabriel Pop on twitter: @vwggolf3