Kids, I’m going to tell you a story. The story of how I met the “hello, world”…
OK, maybe not all of you are familiar with the “How I Met Your Mother” TV show, and this joke probably does not make much sense. But the sitcom is about the 2030s Ted telling his children how he met their mother several years before. And now, I’m here in 2021 telling you, whoever you are, how I became a coder. And, no, I promise you I’ll not take 9 seasons to do that. So, let’s begin.
The year 2003
I was a mere high school student. I was looking for a job or something similar to make some money. At that time, my older sister, Andrea, was an intern for Banco do Brasil – one of the major banks in Brazil. The bank used to open new internship positions regularly and Andrea told me about a new opening. Despite my doubts – I was looking for something more hard-bounded than an internship – I decided to apply for the position. After two weeks I was working for Banco do Brasil in GEREL 5, Andaraí, one of the bank’s regional management sites.
My department was responsible for checking, provisioning, and paying taxes related to bank branches. The internship duties were a lot of boring and handwork: checking month-by-month the due date of the taxes for every city in Rio De Janeiro State, checking and recording in a Lotus 123 spreadsheet the tax values for each of hundreds of bank branches, and so on. After a few months, I understood a pattern and some logic in that.
There was a “master spreadsheet” where we had to update the due date for each County month-by-month. That spreadsheet has a button. On my first day, I was warned to “never push that button” because it would break the spreadsheet. Some day I decided to understand WHY that could happen. So I backed up the original and bravely pushed that button… To my surprise, nothing happened! 🤭 I went further to understand WHY. That button once pushed fired a macro that just reorders all rows to reposition it in a due-day sequence. Magical! As an intern I had no internet access and only with the help of Lotus Help, I’ve fixed the macro! 😎
When I first showed it to my supervisor she was completely wondered! After years of broken macro, a mere intern fixed it. She was so proud of me that she told everybody what I did. It made me feel recognized. Márcia was an incredible person and I have another entire story about her. But, for now, back on track. After that success, I decided to improve my new fixed spreadsheet. I wonder “If I register all due dates for every County at the beginning of the calendar year (how taxes are planned in Brazil)… Maybe I could improve it and reduce a lot of manual work for every month”. That I did.
At this time you may be asking “Where the code appears in this story, man?” and I tell you: now!
Everything changes
Some months after, I arrived at work and there was a new face. A tall guy named Gustavo Alves. Not much older than me but a College student. Specifically, an Information Systems student. At that time, Banco where no longer hiring High School students but only College ones. Gustavo was one of the firsts in that group. On his first day, I was responsible for showing him how things were there and also introducing him to the routine. Then I proudly demonstrate my Lotus 123 spreadsheet and how he should use it. He seemed too much interested in that. He opened the macros to understand how that used to work. After some time he said:
Do you know that you are using database concept?
I didn’t. I had a vague idea of what databases were… I knew that were used to store data in computers but, how could I be using a database concept? 💭 “No” – I said. I’m sure he could read my questions on my forehead… “Never mind, I’ll show you something tomorrow” – he completed.
The next day arrived and I was already in the office when Gustavo asked me to join him at one computer stations. He pulled out from his backpack a CD labeled Visual Basic 6 and told me that I maybe could be interested in that. After a few next, next, finish I opened for the first time the Visual Basic IDE – a gray screen and a popup asking what kind of project you wish to create. Standard EXE was selected. He drew a button on the Form… Double-click on the button. A white window comes to the front with Private sub Command1_Click(). There he wrote – MsgBox("hello, world!") and pushed the blue play button on the top of the IDE…
It’s really hard to explain how I felt that moment… It simply opened a vast horizon to me. I remember asking him “What now?” and he gave me “Now you should do your research because I don’t have VB lessons in College, only C…” as an answer.
Learning by myself
I could not stop there… The bank’s internet access was controlled. Then I asked my manager to give me some minutes to do some internet research. He asked what and once it was to learn something, he agreed to give the access. It was 2004, I was studying and applying for public colleges, called vestibular in Brazil. But, I don’t know exactly why, 2004 Anderson used to believe that he should have a career in Journalism… But that new knowledge was a game-changer. The first site I visited was https://www.apostilando.com, very popular among students. I searched “VB6” and the only “course pack” available was a VB4… Well, I didn’t know a thing of 4 or 6, so I downloaded it… But there was a problem: where could I study if I didn’t have a computer at home? 😟
With the printed document explaining how to code in VB4, I used to read it on the bus while commuting between home and internship. At home, I used to write the code exercises proposed in the course pack. And only when I could use the internship computer I, finally, copied the code to test if and how does it work. After a few weeks of doing this, I asked Marcia to allow me to use the computer after my internship daily time. She was observing me… I told her what I was learning and she said I could do if I would try to make something useful to work. I enjoyed the challenge!
After that, my new routine was: to get to work, finish my tasks, and after that, I had enough time to study coding. I started creating a program to cover all the work the internships did, having an interface to avoid typing errors (like we used to have on Lotus 123) and automating some other stuff. The stack: Visual Basic 6, Crystal Reports 8, and Access.
I decided to stop studying for a journalism career and started to study more math and physics to apply to Information Systems or other related areas. Some friends called me crazy but I was decided. For the first time in my life, I was doing something completely new, all by myself and also, there was the hope that it would become my career shortly.
After the waterfall
A few months after stepping into my journey, I was delivering my first software. I also understand what were bugs in Production time… I was learning how to fix them fast and implementing new features that completely changes the software after a lot was done. I could not help myself, I was only a learner! As much as I studied the much I fell in love with coding. Not much longer after, I was finally accepted to a College. In 2005 I started in Universidade Estácio de Sá. I was trying to extend my internship but after some months, once I had completed two years, my contract was done. No longer after I was recruited to work with ASP Classic… It was a new internship. For Estacio itself, but for me it was my first work in the industry! I was the only 2nd term student, among 6th and 7th term students. And, despite having a short experience as a student, my developing experience in Banco do Brasil, and I dare to say my self-leaning, made me able to even help colleagues in coding. 😃
Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher born in 544 B.C. said:
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.
My river is divided in two at least: before Banco do Brasil and after Banco do Brasil. It had everything to be only a place where I would be only an intern to complete the tasks that the employees don’t want to. But to my surprise, that experience was a waterfall on my river. It was fast and long at the same time. And changed my course. It gave me a direction. After that, I was not the same. Even the department where I worked was not the same. A day, months after leaving the bank, I visited the office. To my surprise, my humble software was still running. But the manager told me they asked for the IT department (the real one) to implement a new version to replace it. And even knowing that my first child had days to perish, I was deeply proud… Maybe vain. I know, it has plenty of flaws but, probably if I hadn’t done that software, maybe all the work would have been preachy and hard to interns after me.
After all, I was also a waterfall in the department’s river.
