How I Got Into Coding
Where It Started
Evenings were spent watching sci-fi shows, my safe haven from the real world. For money, I was raising and selling exotic fish.
This job was right up my alley as a former biology college dropout.
At work, I spent hours chatting with coworkers and customers who were deeply invested in the hobby. I am talking about:
- Scuba divers who maintain large aquarium ecosystems
- College professors collecting the latest fauna
- Deep-pocketed parents picking up rare “Nemo and Dory” variants for their kids
- Students with encyclopedic knowledge of fish
- Local fish and plant breeders
The Turning Point
After a couple of weeks of full-time work, I was given a fish tank setup and asked, “What will you put in the tank?”
My first instinct was to become a fish breeder for the store. After all, I had an insider’s view of what the store needed and what customers bought.
I could go deep into the exact thought process behind what I chose to put in the tank, but that is not really the important part of the story.
What mattered was this: how could I out-nerd my fellow breeders and optimize for a hypothetical fish-breeding business?
With countless nights spent binging sci-fi, my imagination was already primed with ideas.
The Nerd Within
Aside from my insider view of store sales and my background as a biology student, my real advantage was my drive to learn how to build both software and hardware, even when the payoff was not immediate.
Managing a fish tank boiled down to a few key components: light, food, water, and waste management.
Easier, lower-return species required scale to be worth the effort. Harder, higher-return species demanded precision and deeper domain knowledge. Both situations could benefit from technology for monitoring and environmental control.
The best opportunity was clearly in the harder category. Owners of expensive species are much more willing to pay for systems and services that help keep their fish alive and healthy while they are away at work or on vacation.