Coders and Gaming

I feel today that coders fall into 2 categories: those that game and those that don't. I think it's possibly the culture here.

I discovered computers were real when I was about 11 and up to that point I thought they were make believe in the likes of Star Trek and the movies. That's kind of strange considering I had an uncle who brought around an Atari VCS to our house that he borrowed from his girlfriend's sister every week back when I was in primary school. They came every Wednesday and the kids (me) would play games for 1/2 hour before bedtime. About 2 years later we got our own one but I never did think about where the games came from or how they were created.

In 1984 I got my first computer (shared by myself and my brother) and we had a single game - Moon Patrol. From then until I graduated from university I spent a lot of money on games and even more time playing them. I wrote a lot of code for fun too and published shareware.

I gamed from a young age and coded from a young age on that computer and all subsequent computers as well.

My career is a software engineer hit 20 years on the 30th August where my first job was support with some software develoment for good measure. Where I work now we currently have about 25 software developers but about 23 of those aren't what I would call software developers. They are engineers with Post-grad MSc in software something or other. They don't game. I think there's 1 or 2 but compare that with the previous company I worked for - 11 developers and at least have enjoyed gaming to excess. All of those guys were pure software graduates.

I love games. I'm actually not great at them but I love them. My son, 5,  loves them too but he gets once a week for an hour at the weekend for being good. I don't want to deprive him of the experience but I want him to understand limitations. Not like the 18 hours I used to play at a time instead of being in the pub with my classmates at the weekend.

Notes: My Mum and Aunt used to play games every Friday too - my family is big on gaming. They played Frostbite on the VCS and when we moved to the ZX Spectrum it was Sabre Wulf (see Rare Replay) among others. It's no wonder I played a lot of games.