This is from http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jamesyoung, which would be cool to sync here automatically.

I took the long path to professional development. Although technically I learned BASIC on my Atari 1200xl when I was 11 in 1982, I didn't start doing software development professionally until 2000.

As far as actual jobs go, I started doing phone/email support for modems back in the early 90s. This turned into on-site hardware support, which turned into network administration.

Getting tired of the hardware side of things I moved into Quality Assurance testing software, which turned into automated scripting, that got me onto the development side of the fence.

Been doing software development ever since.